Calming signals?

So I've been researching calming signals and was wondering if anyone actually tries to communicate with their dog with these signals? (yawning, lip licking, ect....)

I feel like every time I yawn, I am telling Toki "calm the frick down" even though we are driving in the car or watching TV, something not stimulating or stressful. Plus, Toki is super mellow as it is, so I wonder if he ever gets confused? Sometimes he watches me intently when I yawn, and I wonder what goes through his mind.

Turid Rugaas has a good PDF read which prompted this thread.

I would think that dogs have evolved to live among us and please us, so there would have to be some level on the dogs part of understanding human behavior, like smiling, or crying, or angry faces, just as much as we have developed an understanding of them.

Comments

  • edited March 2012
    We don't try doing it ourselves, per say, but when our dogs shake after a tense moment (usually between the two girls) we say "shake off!" and reward them for it.

    To my understanding, the calming signals aren't telling the other dog to calm down. Instead, the dog using the signals is calming itself and diffusing the situation by saying "hey man, I'm cool!" I think of it like the doggy equivalent of counting to 10 when you get mad.

    And yes, dogs are hardwired to read human faces. They can even track and respond to photographs and video of faces. IIRC they track the left side more than the right but I don't remember why.
  • Sometimes I will lick my lips and do a puppy lip smack when the dogs come up to me, and they will get all silly and wag tails and trot around in prancy circles, often trying to jump up to lick my chin.

    Turid Rugaas also has a video that is interesting to watch.
  • I always thought i was weird for this. But I do all the time. My logic is: they understand me to a certain extent, i understand their language to a certain extent, why not use both? Saru used to respond to lip licking very well. Now, I think he's just too much of an A-hole to care what I have to say. Ciqala is very responsive to it all- honestly I spend more time with her speaking dog and using hand signals than the usual yes, no, etc. With both, the standard word for "no" is a growly "MMM-mmmm." along with a stare. It's always worked better for some reason.

    @jellyfart - I think that may be true to a certain extent. Maybe it's one of those things that they have the ability to learn, thanks to genetics, but not every one learns it. Sort of like housebreaking or other human-centric behaviors.
  • @poeticdragon, I've heard of thAt before, the left eye looking at. I saw a documentary on TV on time about how they read our faces. I wish I remembered what it was called.

    @yandharr Sometimes, if Toki doesn't do what I ask of him, we have a staring contest. If I break or laugh, he doesn't do what is asked. Its rather silly sometimes, like he is questioning "is this girl serious? I really like napping. Not going outside to pee unless she seems really serious".
  • I don't waste my time acting like a dog. I'm pretty sure dogs can tell the difference between us and them.

    Also, dogs evolved with an amazing ability to read humans. It's us humans who suck at reading them. I would worry more about acting like a human and reading dogs, and less about acting like a dog so dogs can read us.

    There are things that I will do around dogs to take pressure off them, like turning sideways to great, or turning my back to an uncomfortable dog, or not making eye contact. But these gestures aren't done as calming signals, they are done to reduce "presence" and to make a dog feel less pressure. It's not a communication thing, it's a "civil presence" thing.

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  • @brad, nicely put! =D
  • agreed, nicely put! :)
  • @brada1878 - So you mean to tell me you never just cut loose and started running around and howling with the rest of your pack!? :p
  • I really Turid Ragaas book "Calming Signals" and after I read it, I decided to experiment a bit. I believe the idea is more to recognize calming signals in dogs and observe them, but I wondered, too, if dogs would/could read human versions of them (I mean I know they can, but I wanted to see it action). So when I was walking Toby once, I watched what he did as we walked past the myriad of barking dogs behind fences in our neighborhood. Mostly he didn't even look at them, but being the Shiba he is, occasionally he stopped, peed, and gave them a hard stare, which of course got them more worked up. So a few times when dogs were really worked up (but Toby wasn't staring), I tried yawning, and noted that it did seem to cool things down a bit....sometimes there was a tiny pause in barking, for example.

    So hardly a scientific study, but I felt that human yawning does seem to work as a calming signal. And of course we all know not to stare at strange dogs, etc. So my point is that while I agree with Brad, I think some of the calming signals are easily transferable to humans and don't seem like us "acting like dogs" but rather may work as cross-species (at least human/canine) calming signals.
  • Thanks!

    @Yandharr - Only during a full-moon! ;o)

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  • @shibamistress "being the Shiba he is, occasionally he stopped, peed, and gave them a hard stare" lol so true. That almost made me spit coffee i laughed so hard. :)

    I have a documentary on DVD somewhere that touched on a study about how dogs observe our facial gestures. I'll have to look it up, but I do know it was aired on PBS at one point.
  • Personally, I've used dog play signals to join with them but never calming. Like Poetic Dragon I have specific cue words that I use to make my dogs relax. For INU its "aca aca aa" and Penny its" Kimiko". Initially, to train it I paired the words while performing deep muscle massage for them. Then elicited it in real life siuations to promote generalization. I chose the words to avoid the chance of spurious/accidental elicitation and also to be specific to each individual.
  • That's a great idea--pairing words with a very calming activity like massage! I might have to try that! (Despite my intention when I entered massage school for people to also work on my dogs, I haven't given a single massage to the dogs yet!)
  • One of my colleagues at work is a veterinary behaviorist who specializes in dogs with behavior problems (typically anxiety issues). In one of our conversations, I brought up Turid Ragaas and she was VERY quick to interrupt me. Apparently "Calming Signals" is pretty hotly debated in the canine behavior community. There seems to be consensus that the things Ragaas identifies as calming signals are in fact some form of canine communication; however, there is a LOT of disagreement over what they are communicating. She cautioned me against interpreting them as attempts to pacify or diffuse tension, but stopped short of offering an alternative interpretation.

    That being said, I think Brad hit the nail on the head. What's important is that these communication signals are properly used by dogs and properly interpreted by the dogs they are communicating with. Dogs are highly unlikely to read those signals from us, and even if they do we have no idea how they will be interpreted. Lisa's anecdote about walking her Shiba is a perfect example. It is equally likely the dogs saw her yawning and paused while thinking "what is that crazy women doing?" (No offense Lisa!)

    Keep in mind that dogs domesticated themselves. The wolves that could understand and interpret what humans were doing without any effort at communication by the humans were the ones who were most likely to hang around near human settlements, and therefore have their progeny become domesticated. So, if you want your dog to relax, it's probably best to act calm yourself, and reassure it gently, as that's most likely what it's genetically programmed to understand from us.
  • No worries Dave! :) Yawning seemed like the most innocuous of signals, which is why I felt ok (and not super ridiculous) trying it. Certainly, though some things do work, which are not maybe calming signals, but types of inter-species communication (like the soft eyes vs. hard stare, approaching full on or sideways or from behind, etc), so I'm willing to have an open mind about all of this.
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