Chapter 4: Be Present: How to Observe Accurately

This chapter is a workshop. To prepare for the work you will do, I recommend that you go ahead and read the rest of the book and then return to this chapter. It is essential for you to learn how to understand what you are seeing when you watch your dog. As we’ve already discussed, your dog will behave in some ways just like other dogs, and he will do other things in his own unique way. Instead of giving you a cookie-cutter list of safe versus aggressive behaviors, I’m going to help you make your own list specifically for your dog.

You’ll need a notebook, smart phone, or computer so you can record your responses to the questions and exercises throughout the chapter. If you want to read through the entire chapter before starting to take notes, that is fine. Make your notes as soon after you observe your dog’s behavior as possible. It’s very easy to forget and then inadvertently mentally edit what we thought we saw. If you can record your dog’s behavior, you’re ahead of the game because you can watch the video as many times as needed. It’s important to note that you should not try to get your dog to act in any certain way for these observations, and you should not put him in situations he will find difficult.

What does your dog do when he’s aggressive? What does your dog do when he’s friendly?

Instead of thinking of biting as aggressive behavior, just think of biting as biting, and do the same for all other behaviors. Did he bite or not? Did he growl or not? Did he lunge or not? Did he lower his ears? Pull back his lips? Drool? Scratch his neck?

What specific behavior does your dog do that is causing problems?

Don’t worry about whether he is scared or mad. Just watch him in his everyday life and note what you see him actually doing. He barks. He lunges. He tries to hide, and if your nephew corners him, he lunges. He pushes your neighbor hard with his paws and barks in his face.

You might notice some more subtle behaviors. He holds his breath. (This is harder to see in fluffy dogs, but there’s often a place in the body where you can see it, such the neck, the nostrils, or the mouth.) You can break that down a bit more, and instead of saying that he’s holding his breath, you could note that his belly tightened or his nostrils stopped moving. Maybe you see his tongue go inside his mouth and his mouth close. He might lick his lips. He might shake off as if he were wet, but he’s completely dry. He might yawn even though he’s not tired. Does he stare? Does he do something that seems completely benign but is always or often followed by something worrisome, like a growl, lunge, or attempted bite? Does he lower his head or back up? The first part of your task at this phase is to learn to simply see what your dog does.

You may have ideas about why your dog behaves aggressively. Maybe it seems like he wants to protect you, and maybe that’s true. You may have been told that he is dominant or he is territorial. Maybe he was bred to be aggressive, or maybe he is stubborn and uncooperative. Maybe you believe he was abused. Maybe he wasn’t well socialized as a pup, meaning that his owners didn’t introduce him to a variety of safe, fun experiences, so everything new seems scary to him. Sometimes we know a dog’s history, and sometimes we don’t, but, either way, we can still work with him. Knowing these reasons behind your dog’s behavior might be helpful, but focusing too much on the reasons, especially when you are only speculating, can make your work with your dog less effective. What matters is that your dog is doing something that isn’t safe for others or for himself.

As you prepare yourself to work with your dog, you must practice observing. There are some techniques that are critical for performing CAT well and safely. The observation techniques I will teach you are very important. They will help you better understand your dog and make the very best decisions for him.

You’ve been watching your dog for as long as you’ve had him. You may have tons of pictures of him on your phone. You may have logged a lot of miles walking together or hours on the couch, watching movies together. My goal is to teach you how to really and truly observe your dog wherever he is and whatever he is doing so that you can understand what you’re seeing without either reading too much into it or excusing it. Reading too much into it might be, “Oh no! He growled! He’s not safe, and I can’t keep him.” Excusing it might be, “Oh, he’s just playing.”

We had some friends years ago whose Weimaraner roared loudly into my husband’s face every time my husband sneezed. The dog would run to my husband, and there was so much energy behind his roars that his front feet left the ground. Sometimes he even threw in a shove with his front paws. One of his owners would drag him away by the collar each time this happened. The family thought it was just “Harley being Harley.” Yeah, I guess it was, but Harley was a pretty scary dog. You’ve got to learn to see what your dog does and take it at face value. Had these owners been clients, I might have asked, “Did he bark into Richard’s face? Is that something you want to continue? Was it a safe, friendly behavior?”

This dog has noticed something. From this photo alone, it is not possible to tell whether the dog is going to react aggressively, so his owners must observe carefully what he does next.

As a dog gets closer to aggressive behavior, it’s common for him to pull the corners of his mouth closer to the front to form a C shape and keep his tongue inside his mouth, as shown. The aggression at this point is mild; there is no visible tightness in his facial muscles.

Many books on dog aggression will tell you about canine communication signals and how to read canine body language. You need to know this information, and it is very valuable as far as learning about the canine species. Your very important job right now, though, is to learn about your individual dog. He is part of a species and a breed (or more than one breed); as such, he will have many behaviors in common with other dogs. Your dog also is an individual with his own collection of experiences from which he has learned. You can’t assume that your dog is going to do exactly what dogs are supposed to do. There are some diagrams used by dog trainers that list the behaviors dogs exhibit as their stress levels escalate from relaxation to aggression. I wanted to get a better handle on how I could use these charts, so in preparing to write this book, I made ten chronological ethograms based on videos of dogs, including a few dogs with whom I’d worked. A chronological ethogram is a chart of behaviors, listed in the order they occur. Because I have personally worked with many aggressive dogs over the past decade, I had created my own imaginary ethogram in my head. I was pretty sure that dogs performed aggressive behaviors in roughly this order:

  1. Sense presence of thing he’s concerned about (person, other dog, etc.) in some way (sight, sound, etc.)
  2. Notice or look at it
  3. Freeze (hold very still)
  4. Close mouth
  5. Pull tongue inside mouth
  6. Lower head
  7. Put ears back
  8. Push corners of lips forward, closer to nose
  9. Back up or bend back legs
  10. Move forward quickly
  11. Launch toward person or dog
  12. Bite

This, or something similar, is what I believed I saw nearly every time a dog behaved aggressively.

This dog is demonstrating calm, attentive behavior. What he does before and after this behavior will tell his owner more about whether he will behave aggressively. Remember, chains of behaviors give valuable information about how your dog is most likely to behave next.

What do you think I found with my small study of ten dogs? In my small, casual study, no dog performed all of those behaviors. Most threw in extra behaviors; for example, one dog always turned in a complete circle before lunging. And they never did the behaviors in precisely this order. Dogs mix it all up. In the ten dogs I watched, their behaviors were similar, but not identical. You can’t even guarantee that the same dog will perform exactly the same behaviors every time.

Your dog probably hasn’t studied the diagrams that trainers use. He does what he has learned to do based on what is worthwhile to him at a moment in time in a given situation. And while he doesn’t intend it, he will likely do the textbook things from time to time, even if he doesn’t do them exactly the way they’re laid out in diagrams. So I discarded the idea of either borrowing an established diagram or creating my own generalized diagram. There needs to be one diagram per dog per experience. You’ve got to watch your own dog and get to know what he does in situations where his aggressive behaviors occur.

Exercise 1

Practice this exercise for short periods of time (two to ten minutes) as often as you can every day. It’s better to do a short session every day than to do a longer session once or twice a week. Get into the habit of doing this regularly—you can do anything for two minutes!

This dog’s teeth and puckered upper lip suggest that he is behaving aggressively, but how can you tell for sure? Observe what happens before and after this behavior.

This is an observation practice for you, with your dog as the focus. One of the most common things trainers and behaviorists hear about dog bites is that they came out of the blue with no warning. That often seems true, but it never is. There was a warning, but it’s very common for people to miss the warnings either because they’re not in the habit of watching their dogs’ behavior or because they don’t understand what they’re seeing.

I once observed a couple of rescue puppies from Korea who had been transported to the United States for adoption. These two young Jindo puppies were surprisingly well adjusted, and they are both now enjoying good lives with adoptive families. But when they first arrived at the shelter, someone approached with a camera with a large flash attachment on it and began to snap photos of them. The puppies backed up, lowered their heads, and barked. The photographer said, “Well, at least they’re being playful.” I explained that the pups were expressing fear. They had never seen a camera before, much less one with such a large light attachment (I don’t think I’d ever seen one of those before, either).

To me, it was obvious that the puppies were reacting to try to escape this huge thing they’d never seen before. This was true reactivity—they were alarmed by this massive space-age device that was flashing bright light at them. Had it continued, they certainly would have kept barking, and they were already retreating to try and hide. Fortunately, the photographer was a kind, animal-loving person who quickly changed her tactic upon hearing what the pups were experiencing, and the puppies quickly recovered their normal friendly behavior. But the fact is, despite being an animal lover, this photographer didn’t understand what the puppies were saying with their body language.

Most people don’t understand what their dogs are telling them with their responses to their environments, and that’s understandable. No one teaches us; it’s something we have to make an effort to learn, which we only do if it somehow becomes clear that we need to take action. Fortunately for most of us, most dogs don’t require a lot of fancy knowledge. They fit in with their families pretty well. But it’s not uncommon for dogs to do things that are problematic. That’s when we have to take a step back and study up before taking the next step.

In this exercise, don’t expect anything in particular to happen; you’re just seeing what your individual dog does in the situations he finds himself in. You’re just being aware of your dog living his life. Because aggression is such a big deal, it is very important for you to learn how to observe carefully and to really notice what is happening. It’s hard to do that in the middle of your dog’s aggressive flare-up, so we’re going to start practicing when he’s feeling at ease and both of you are in a comfortable situation.

Yawns are not just for tired dogs. They often occur when a dog is learning and are appropriate behaviors to reinforce instead of aggression.

Grab your computer or your notebook and pen and have it beside you; you will need it for subsequent exercises. Turn off the sound on your phone, turn it over so that you can’t see notifications, and put it down. If you will be taking notes on your phone, turn off the notifications and silence ringtones so that you can focus on this observation. If you normally have the TV or computer on, turn the volume down but leave it on so that it won’t seem strange to the dog. Turn away from the TV or computer so that you aren’t distracted.

Sit in a chair with your back straight and your feet on the floor. This position will help you tune in completely. You need to be in an alert position, not a position that will make it hard for you to pay attention.

First, just sit in this position. Don’t pay particular attention to your dog right now. Just be aware of this place and time. Does your back hurt? (Move around a little to get comfortable.) Are your feet cold? Do you feel a pleasant breeze from a window? What sounds do you hear? What do you see right in front of you? Just notice these things. Your dog can be in the room, but do not give him any commands or gestures. Just let him do what he chooses to do; if he is crated, just leave him as he is.

Even though this part sounds pretty simple, it will probably take some practice. You’re going to get distracted at first, and that’s OK. You’re just practicing. Just notice the distraction and go back to being aware and present in your space.

Take a deep breath and exhale in a normal, natural way. There’s no need to do fancy yoga breathing. You’re just firing up your brain to do its best work. As you get comfortable and start to relax, your breathing may slow. Let it. Let your body manage the right amount of oxygen so that your brain can pay attention to your dog.

Do this every day for a couple of minutes. You can move right into Exercise 2 from this exercise, or you can do them separately.

Averting the eyes and turning the head are among common behaviors to reinforce in place of aggression.

Exercise 2

Be sure that you can see your dog from where you are sitting. If you can’t, move to a place in the room where you can see him, sit down again as previously described, and have your notebook near you. Take a gentle look at your dog. Don’t stare at him, and avoid keeping your eyes glued to his face. If his body tenses or he stares back, move your eyes away from his face, look at the floor, and turn your head slightly to either side. Relax your face and eyes and watch him gently. For some dogs, it may be helpful to look at his paw or shoulder or rump rather than straight at his face, or to move your eyes from place to place on his body.

Watch what your dog is doing. Did his behavior change when you started watching him? What did he do? In your notebook, write the following and jot down a couple of notes about what he did: When I started watching him, he (e.g., stood up and stretched, came to me, wagged his tail, continued sleeping, etc.).

For each of the following components of Exercise 2, jot down quick notes:

If you’re like most modern humans, you are focused on technology until something in the environment changes. You want a glass of water, so you get up, and your dog follows you. You pet him on the head. He either nudges you to do it some more, jumps on you, turns his head away, or does something completely different. Or maybe you just sit down in your chair, and he comes out of a slumber and thumps his tail, so you stroke his ears or scratch his neck.

Did you know that we cannot pay attention to two things at once? When we are messing with our phones and watching our dogs at the same time, we are actually switching back and forth between the two things, so we really aren’t getting a clear picture of either one. I am notorious for watching TV while checking Facebook or reading an article on my phone. I often miss a pertinent part of the show or skim through an article without really absorbing it. But when you have an aggressive dog, you can’t afford to divide your attention in many situations. You have to be on your game.

As you record your observations, realize that there are no correct answers; there are only observations. Take note of what he actually did. These notes will be useful and interesting to refer to as you go through the work we’re going to talk about.

Exercise 3

For the purposes of learning your dog’s behavior, I encourage you to think about it in terms that other people are most likely to agree with if they see your dog in action. If you say to Joe, your neighbor, “Don’t worry; my dog is friendly,” Joe may think you’re nuts because his experience may be different. Maybe Joe is one of the people your dog barks at every day. Joe may be suspicious of every move your Fido makes. If you’re on a walk and your dog pounces when he sees Joe, you may think, “Oh, he’s feeling playful,” but Joe may think, “That darn dog lunged at me again!” You’re both describing the same behavior, but both you and Joe have edited your memories and interpretations of what Fido did, and you have each labeled his actions in a way that fits with your experience. That’s not fair to Fido, even if you’re the one saying he’s friendly. If you think your dog is friendly, yet he lunges at people, you are missing the cues your dog has been giving you that he is uncomfortable and is moving closer to behaving in a way that may be risky and dangerous. Remember, if there’s risk to a human or another dog, there’s risk to your dog, too. Humans don’t tolerate aggression from dogs very well, and someone could report your dog to authorities1.

Ready to pounce or ready to play? Again, observation is the key.

Exercise 4

Here’s a way to get your brain around describing your dog’s behavior. Think about a hat and describe it to yourself. Don’t read any further until you have that hat in mind and write down some notes or draw it in your notebook.

Me? I instantly thought of a tweed flat cap my Dad used to wear. It was a brown and rust-colored houndstooth pattern on an off-white background. The back was a bit taller than the front. It had a narrow brim in the front. How about your hat? Ask your family or a few people on social media to describe or post a picture of the first hat they think of.

How similar are the hats you, your friends, and I described? The first response I got when I posted this on Facebook was “Made of twigs, adorning a beautiful woman of a certain age.” It was accompanied by a photographic art piece of an elderly woman wearing a huge headdress made of twigs. Some other people posted knit caps in a variety of colors and there were a couple of fedoras and some baseball caps with different logos on them. There was a hat shaped like a Christmas tree, another was a Cat in the Hat-style hat, and another was a 1950s pillbox hat with a small mesh veil like Jackie O used to wear. Big hats, little hats, red hats, and blue hats, most everyone thought of a different type of hat.

The hat we think of first may change from day to day. If you asked me on a different day to describe a hat, I would think of a straw cowboy hat I found in my son’s room as we moved things out to prepare for installing new flooring.

All of these different descriptions means that hat isn’t descriptive enough. It’s too general. If I tell you I want a hat, but you don’t know it’s because I’m cold so you buy me a Jackie O pillbox hat, I’m still going to have cold ears. The context is important. So, I would probably get a more appropriate hat if I said, “I’m cold. Do you have a knit cap I could borrow?” It’s important to work on our clarity and create some clear definitions.

So, let’s say Fido pounces at Joe, and Joe freaks out. You think Fido is friendly and cute, and you can’t figure out why Joe is acting this way. Joe thinks your dang dog is terrifying. How do we clarify what your dog actually did? To clarify, we think about behavior instead of labels, and we think of behaviors in context. Behaviors are things you can observe happening in a certain situation, and the practice in this exercise will help you get better at reading them.

This may sound kind of simplistic, but your dog’s behavior is anything your dog can do, and, for the purposes of our observations, anything you can see him doing. Examples include walk, sit, lift a paw, hold tail stiffly above his spine level, wag tail slowly and loosely below his spine, make a panting noise, extend tongue from his mouth, dig a hole in the garden, grab the pot roast off the kitchen counter.

Friendly is a very general label that isn’t too helpful and is not a specific behavior at all. It’s a general way to describe a group of behaviors. I think my dog is friendly, but is that a universal view? My dog, Aero, wags his tail in a helicopter circle and puts his head on a lot of people’s chests. He did that with my sister, and he did that with a former boss the very first time he met her. But several years ago, a man approached my office door with a former boss. When Aero saw the man, he froze, growled, and barked loudly. I was shocked. I had never seen this behavior from him before. But now I know that my dog may put his head on some people’s chests in some situations, but he may also growl and bark at some other people in some other situations. Is my dog friendly? Yes, sometimes. And no, sometimes. Context is key.

Going forward, in your observation notebook, jot down not only what your dog does but also the context in which he does it. In my book, I might have two notes.

In my living room, my dog placed his head on my sister’s chest and wagged his tail in a circle.

In my office, my dog growled and lunged at an animal cruelty investigator.

It’s perfectly fine to use expressions like friendly and aggressive in general conversation. If we didn’t use words like those, it would take forever to tell a story. But for observation purposes, if the expression doesn’t describe the behavior and situation in a way that allows everyone to understand what happened, don’t use it. We need to know whether we’re talking Stetsons or swim caps.

Exercise 5

Create a log in your notebook with the following headings:

Number

Date and Time

Dog’s Activity before Behavior

Situation

Who Was There?

Dog’s Activity after Behavior

Under Number, number the incidents as they occur during the day. Under Date and Time, include the time of day or night when you made the observation. Under Dog’s Activity before/after Activity, record simply and clearly what the dog did as you learned to do in the earlier observation exercises. Under Situation, indicate where and when the behavior happened and what circumstances might have been related to the behavior’s happening. In the Who Was There? column, indicate who else (people and animals) was there when the behavior happened. Log information daily, and don’t limit your observations to aggressive behavior only.

Observing without Labeling

Let’s do another short observation of your dog and describe what he is actually doing, without labels. You’re going to start the same way as in previous exercises. Get in your upright position with your feet on the floor, and take some deep breaths until you feel comfortable. Take a few more breaths. Look at your dog in the way I instructed you earlier. What did he do this time?

I did this exercise with Aero, and here’s my observation:

When I turned to look at him, Aero was lying on the floor. His back legs were extended to his left side with his weight on his right hip. His front legs were extended in front of him and his upper body was upright and sternal (on the keel of his chest) with his weight balanced on his elbows. His head was resting on his left front leg. His eyes were already aimed at me when I looked at him. He lifted his head and began to lick his left front leg, making an audible slurping noise. As I continued to look at him, he lifted his head and chewed at a spot behind his shoulder blade for a second before lifting his left back leg to scratch his neck. He looked at me, the whites of his eyes showing, and scratched some more. He turned his head away from me, yawned with a wide-open mouth, and closed his mouth quickly, resulting in his teeth making a clacking sound. He rested his head on his leg and smacked his lips twice. As I turned back to my computer, I heard a fairly loud exhale through his nose.

What’s the first thing you thought as you read that? If you read my description and thought that Aero sounded uncomfortable, I would have to agree. It wasn’t what I expected him to do; I thought he would get up and come over to me. I was wrong. My observation was right. Later, as you perform these exercises over and over, you will become more accurate in your predictions, but you’ll still miss sometimes. Why is that? It’s often because something in the environment that you’re not tuned into has changed. Some changes in the environment are very subtle, so they can be hard to catch. In the case of my observation of Aero, I think he wasn’t used to me turning around from my computer and just looking at him—so I was the part of the environment that had changed. He wasn’t uncomfortable enough to bark or run away, and because he has a good, long history with me, he probably wasn’t worried that I’d suddenly attack him.

Think about how it feels to have someone start staring at you. It can be uncomfortable. Aero’s licking his leg audibly, chewing a spot behind his shoulder blade, scratching his neck, showing the whites of his eyes, and yawning are all behaviors that sometimes indicate stress in dogs. But he might do the same things if he were covered in fleas, right? So we have to cover all our bases.

Dogs who want to keep the peace will often avert their eyes. If an aggressive dog chooses this, we should reward it.

In my notebook, I could write that my observation made Aero a little nervous (a general label) or, to use an expression common in dog training, that he was displaying a lot of calming signals, (another label)2. Or I could simply refer to what I wrote in the paragraph describing his behavior. Which description of his behavior is clearer? Nervous is a label that can describe a lot of different behaviors and could mean a lot of different things to different people. Scratching himself could suggest stress or it could indicate fleas. Aero did what he did, so that is what I described. If I said he was nervous because I was looking at him, you would have to figure out your own explanations for what I meant. But when you read the paragraph in which I described what Aero did, how much did you have to figure out about his behavior? Nothing, I hope.

Is the dog feeling uncomfortable or simply scratching an itch?

You must learn to see the behaviors that are part of your dog’s behavior chain when he’s heading toward dangerous behavior, and this exercise teaches you how to observe behavior. Do Exercise 5 often. Don’t do it only when you think your dog is going to behave aggressively or just after he behaved aggressively. Start with just doing it whenever, wherever. Do it for varying lengths of time, in different locations, with different things going on, and at different times of day. You can do it anytime you’re with your dog.

Remember to look for the specific behaviors you see, not the labels. Then look for chains of behavior that seem to be hooked together in a particular order. Do you see your dog performing the same behaviors in a similar consecutive series in similar situations? For example, when you turn to look at him, does he lift his lead, lick his leg, scratch his neck, and yawn? Does he keep it mixed up? What does he do? Practice watching a lot.

Eventually, you’re going to need to find what your dog does as he gears up to behave aggressively. Doing Exercise 5 frequently during neutral times is going to help you learn to see his behavior in context. When behavior scientists study behavior, one of the key things they are working toward is to be able to predict when a behavior is likely to happen. You are a researcher in this process. Instead of me telling you what your dog is going to do next, it’s essential for you to learn how to predict it yourself. Learn how to describe your dog’s particular behavior chains clearly. To predict aggressive behaviors with the most accuracy possible, you have to know what your dog will do, not what the textbook dog will do. Your dog is a unique, individual canine.

1 Don’t blame the authorities, though. Their job is to uphold the law and keep the community safe.

2 On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming Signals is a book by Norwegian dog expert Turid Rugaas in which she describes some common behaviors related to dogs interacting with others. Her book can help you identify behaviors of significance.