Using Your Body Cues
Dogs are really sensitive to our body movements and our body postures. Just as we’re teaching you to look at their body movements and their body postures, dogs are already doing that with humans. Certain movements of your body can be used to encourage a dog to move forward or to move backwards. In particular, using your body to block a dog’s forward motion can be a really useful tool for dogs that are jumping on people or dogs that are trying to bolt out of the enclosure or out of the gate. Using body blocking is a great way to get the dogs to move out of your space and you can then claim the space they had without resorting to physical manipulation of the dog. So you really don’t have to push the dog, or pull the dog, or shove the dog down, you can actually use body blocking to get a lot of motion and movement out of the dog. It’s a lot safer to manage the dogs this way as well.
Body Blocking
You’ll see how sensitive the dogs are to your body motions. You’ll see in the video below that this is not about forcefully pushing or manipulating the dogs with your hands – we aren’t touching the dogs at all. It’s about subtle movements of your body that can take over or release a dog’s space.
Calming Signals
Dogs use calming signals, also known as stress signals, and they use these when they are nervous or anxious. What’s nice is that we can also use some of these signals ourselves.
- Look-away
- Blinking
- Yawning
- Lip Licking
You use these signals by giving the dog a look away, doing a yawn, licking your lips or blinking yourself. You may see the dog relax and the body posture move from yellow back to green.