Body Language

Cesar's Way : The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems
by Cesar Millan, Melissa Jo Peltier

(Page 5 of 5)

Your dog is constantly observing you, reading your energy. He is also reading your body language. Dogs use body language as another means of communicating with one another, but it's important to remember that their body language is also a function of the energy they're projecting. Remember the example of Sharon and Julius, where simply thinking about being Cleopatra inspired Sharon to stand up taller and prouder? The energy fed the body language, and in turn, the body language reinforced the energy. The two are always interconnected.

You can learn to interpret your dog's body language by the visual clues he or she gives you, but it's important to remember that different energy can determine the context of a posture. It's like those pesky words called homonyms in English - words that sound exactly the same but mean different things. Like read and red, or flee and flea. For the non-native English speaker, it takes a little while to learn how to distinguish between such words. But of course, it all comes down to context. How a word is used is what determines its meaning. It's the same with dogs and body language. A dog with his ears back may be signaling calm submission, which is the appropriate energy for a follower in a pack. Or, he may be signaling that he is afraid. One dog mounting another may signal dominance, or it may simply be play behavior. The energy always creates the context.

May I Sniff You?

As I mention earlier, scent can also function as a language for dogs. Your dog's nose - millions of times more sensitive than yours - provides him with a huge amount of important information about his environment and the other animals in it. In nature, a dog's anal scent is his "name." When two dogs meet, they'll sniff each other's behinds as a way of introduction. Since they don't have phone books, dogs can tell other dogs where they live and where they've roamed by urinating on a "signpost" - a bush, a tree, a rock, or a pole. When a female is in heat, she'll deposit her scent through urine all throughout her territory, placing a kind of personal ad for the male dogs in the neighborhood5 - who may show up on her owner's doorstep the following morning, without her poor human owner knowing how in the world they got "invited." Through scent, dogs can also find out if another dog is sick or what kind of food it has been eating. As in the studies of dogs and their ability to "sniff" out emotional changes in humans, scientists have for many years been trying to understand the miraculous power of a dog's nose to discern all sorts of subtle information. In September 2004, the British Medical Journal published the results of a Cambridge University study that proved that dogs could "sniff out" bladder cancer in urine samples at least 41 percent of the time.6 For years, there had been anecdotal evidence of such miraculous feats, but now science is actively working to research how dogs can help detect diseases at much earlier stages than even some high-tech equipment can detect it.

You know those whole-body CT scan machines, where you lie down for a few moments and supposedly get a complete diagnosis of all your bodily systems? That's pretty much what dogs do when they first meet you. They use their noses to give you a whole-body scan, check you out, find out where you've been and what you've been doing lately. In dog etiquette, you're supposed to let them do it. At my Dog Psychology Center, when a new dog enters the pack's territory, it is only polite for him to remain still while everybody in the pack comes up and smells him. If the dog stands quietly, allowing the others to finish sniffing, he will be accepted more easily into the pack. If he moves away, the other dogs will chase him around until they're done sniffing. A sign that a dog is antisocial toward other dogs is that he is uncomfortable or aggressive about being sniffed. That's a dog that hasn't learned any manners - like a human who won't shake hands upon introduction. When a person enters the gate of my center and walks through the dog pack, the dogs will do the same thing to her. Many people find it intimidating - or just plain terrifying - to have a pack of forty very scary-looking dogs descend on them and start sniffing away. A person shouldn't look at or touch the dogs during this process, but the dogs should be allowed to surround that person and smell her. That's the only way they can become comfortable with a new animal of any species - by learning to distinguish her by her scent. I'm not "Cesar" to my dogs. I'm their pack leader, which is Cesar's scent and energy.

While smelling you is a way for your dog to recognize you, projecting the correct energy is the key to becoming your dog's pack leader. We'll go deeper into the pack leader concept - it is the cornerstone of your healthy relationship with your dog. But first, it's important to remember that your dog doesn't see the world the same way you do. Once you learn to experience your dog as an animal first, and not as a four-legged human, you will be better able to understand his "language" of energy - and truly "hear" what he is saying to you.

Copyright © 2006 by Cesar Millan. Excerpted by permission of Harmony, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Founder of the Dog Psychology Center in Los Angeles, Cesar Millan is the star of Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan on National Geographic Channel. In 2005, the National Humane Society Genesis Award Committee presented him with a Special Commendation for his work in rehabilitating sheltered animals. A native of Culican, Mexico, Cesar lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Ilusion, and two sons, Andre and Calvin.

Melissa Jo Peltier, an executive producer and writer of Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, has been honored for her film and television writing and directing with an Emmy and more than fifty other awards. She lives in Los Angeles and Nyack, New York.