Smacking the lips
ˇ Wagging the tail - should a dog show signs of anxiety, calming or anything that clearly has little to do with happiness, the wagging of the tail isn’t an expression of happiness, but rather that the dog wants to calm you.
ˇ Urinating on himself - A dog who is cowering and crawling toward his owner while wetting himself and waving his tail, is showing three clear signs of calming - and of fear. Wanting to get up into your face and lick the corners of your mouth.
ˇ Making the face round and smooth with the ears close to the head in order to act like a puppy. (No one will harm a puppy, is what the dog believes)
ˇ Lying down with the belly against the ground. This has nothing to do with submission - submission is when the dog lays down with the belly up. Lying down with the belly towards the ground is a calming signal.
ˇ ...And there are even more calming signals that are used in combination with others. For instance, a dog may urinate at the same time as he is turning his back to something. This is a clear sign of calming by for instance an annoying adolescent dog.
Some dogs act like puppies, jumping around and act silly, throwing sticks around, etc. if they discover a fearful dog nearby. It’s supposed to have, and does have, a calming effect.
Meeting situations
A meeting situation between two strange dogs will almost never show signs of strong submission or what people refer to as dominant behavior. A meeting situation between two dogs will usually be something like this:
King and Prince see each other at 100 feet range and are headed toward each other. They start sending each other message the moment they see each other. Prince stops and stands still (´freezes´), and King is walking slowly while he keeps glancing at the other dog through the corner of his eye.
As King gets closer, Prince starts licking his nose intensely, and he turns his side to King and starts sniffing the ground too. Now King is so close that he needs to be even more calming, so he starts walking in a curve and away from Prince - still slowly and now he is licking his nose too. Prince sits down, and looks away by turning his head far to one side.
By now the two dogs have ´read´ each other so well that they know whether they wish to go over and greet each other, or if this could get so intense that it is best to stay away from each other.
Never force dogs into meeting others
Allow the dogs to use their language in meeting situations so that they feel safe. Sometimes they will walk up to each other and get along, other times they feel that it’s safer to stay at a distance - after all, they have already read each other’s signals, they do so even at a several hundred meters distance - there’s no need to meet face to face.
In Canada, dog trainers who attended my lecture, came up with a new name of these calming signals: ´The Language of Peace”. That’s exactly what it is. It’s a language, which is there to make sure that dogs have a way to avoid and solve conflicts and live together in a peaceful manner. And the dogs are experts at it.
Start observing and you will see for yourself. Most likely, you will get a much better relationship with your dog and other dogs; too, once you are beginning to realize what the dog is really telling you. It’s likely that you will understand things you earlier were unable to figure out. It is incredibly exciting, as well as educational.
Welcome to the world of the dog, and to knowledge of a whole new language!
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