Forewarned is Forearmed — Hugging and Kissing Dogs

Lit­tle kids love hug­ging and kiss­ing dogs.  Unfor­tu­nately, hug­ging dogs is prob­a­bly one of the most com­mon causes of dog bites.  You may not have thought about the ways peo­ple and dogs greet each other.  Peo­ple do not greet each other the same as dogs. (Thank good­ness.)  We are pri­mates.  We walk directly toward a per­son that we are greet­ing, look them straight in the eye and either shake hands or hug.  This is pre­cisely why we assume that dogs want to be greeted the same way.  When dogs greet each other, they sort of sidle up side­ways to each other and sniff.  If every­thing is okay, they will either start play­ing or begin run­ning around sniff­ing and search­ing.  When greet­ing, dogs do not look each other directly in the eye or throw their “arms” around each other.  As a matter-of-fact, dogs see all of those actions as threat­en­ing or aggres­sive.  How would you feel about some­one greet­ing you by walk­ing up to you side­ways, not mak­ing eye con­tact and then start sniff­ing you.  Call the Police!  Under­stand­ing the behav­ior of a dif­fer­ent species that we live with is important.

One of the most con­cise expla­na­tions of the dif­fer­ences between how dogs and peo­ple greet each other is found in the excel­lent book, The Other End Of The Leash, by Patri­cia B. McConnell, Ph.D.  If you are a dog lover, you will learn much more about your four-legged friends by read­ing this book.  The Other End Of The Leash, exam­ines many aspects of canine behav­ior.  Dr. McConnell com­bines her own per­sonal and pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences with the research in canine behav­ior.  Dr. McConnell and vir­tu­ally all other researchers of dog behav­ior rec­om­mend that we dis­cour­age hug­ging and kiss­ing dogs.

In my expe­ri­ence the peo­ple who most want to hug and pet soft liv­ing things are young ado­les­cent girls and chil­dren between about three and five years of age.  I’ve worked with dozens of fam­i­lies with sweet young girls who got growled at, snapped at, or bit­ten in the face (usu­ally not badly, thank heav­ens) when they threw their arms around their dog.  Like young female pri­mates every­where, they craved cud­dling and touch­ing.  Yet while they were think­ing warm, lov­ing thoughts, their dog inter­preted their hug as a rude, dom­i­neer­ing threat display. 

–The Other End Of The Leash, Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs 17 (Ran­dom House Pub­lish­ing Group 2002)

We cer­tainly do not want to see a dog returned to a breeder or shel­ter because of an inci­dent that could have been eas­ily avoided.  Become more obser­vant of dogs’ body lan­guage.  There are many body sig­nals that dogs exhibit that com­mu­ni­cate stress or anx­i­ety.  Be aware that one can not rely on one sig­nal from the dog.  A wag­ging tail does not nec­es­sar­ily indi­cate a friendly dog.  You must take a look at the “whole dog. ” While many signs of anx­i­ety in a dog are com­mon behav­iors, look­ing at the dog as a whole lets you know whether he is anxious,fearful or stressed.  A dog with a tucked tail, by itself, doesn’t tell you very much.  How­ever, if the dog’s tail is tucked, its tongue is flick­ing, the ears are pulled back and he is look­ing away and yawn­ing, you have a stressed and anx­ious dog on your hands.  Stay away.  With respect to child safety I would rec­om­mend that you take a look at the web­site, www.doggonesafe.com.

We can also use our under­stand­ing of canine behav­ior to avoid prob­lems with a dog.  Do you or your child know what to do if approached by a strange dog or a dog that is being overly play­ful?  Don’t look at the dog and stand per­fectly still.  Dogs are attracted to move­ment.  If you aren’t mov­ing and you aren’t star­ing, the dog will gen­er­ally lose inter­est.  They will usu­ally move on to some­thing that is mov­ing and is more inter­est­ing to them.