WHY ANIMALS DO THE THING

Sounds like he’s having fun! Think about what toy play looks like - it’s pretty similar behaviors, much of the time. If treats are super exciting, maybe it’s more enjoyable to play with it before eating it and ending the fun time.

everythingfox:

He’s a musician

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I love this investigatory behavior. This dog is obviously so interested in why the ground moves and makes weird noises, and is having such a good time trying to figure it out!

(Without context, I’m not commenting on the pup being off-leash - the Twitter account sourced is a scraper account so we don’t know anything about where this is occurring).

Welcome to why barking is a really complicated behavior problem to address once it’s become frequent. I’m going to say, as I always do here, that you should find a local positive reinforcement-based trainer to work with on your specific issues, but I’m happy to talk theory a little bit.

There’s a lot of different reasons dogs bark, which is where you have to start. They might be letting you know there’s someone nearby (alert barks) or they might be asking for something (demand barks). It could also be communicative with other dogs letting them know to back off (threat barks) or inviting them to play (play solicitation barks). They might be expressing frustration or internal conflict (referential barks - I can’t for the life of me find the paper about this I remember reading). So the first thing you have to figure out is why they’re barking, which means understanding what the context is. Only then can you figure out how you’re going to be able to modify the behavior. That means you may have to watch for a while without trying to interrupt or redirect to figure out what’s going on, even though that goes against the rule of not letting animals practice behaviors you don’t want.

A good example of the variety of causes for barking is your classic “dog barking at a window” situation. A dog barking at passerby and their dogs might be, for instance, frustrated about the proximity of other dogs it can’t greet or interact with. (This is often your classic barrier frustration situation). But a different dog might be expressing discomfort - there’s another dog that’s too close to it / it’s property, and that’s uncomfortable. And a third dog, say of a guarding breed, might be alert-barking to tell you about the proximity of strangers. Each of those is going to need to be addressed differently. For a dog with barrier frustration, I might put up opaque window cling so they can’t see out the window, preventing them from seeing the stimulus that’s triggering the barking. For a dog that’s alert-barking, all it might take in some cases is training an acknowledgement cue. (Basically telling the dog yes, I see your concern, good job telling me, job done, chill out now). I’m purposefully not giving an example for anxiety or fear solutions because those are complicated situations that should be handled individually.

The hard park about modifying barking behaviors is that you’re only the reinforcer for some of them - in some cases, because barking is a bit of a self-referential expression of an internal state, getting to bark at something can actually be internally reinforcing for the dog. In a situation where, say, your dog is demand-barking for dinner, you can very easily choose to stop reinforcing it: don’t react to the dog when they bark for dinner, only put food down when they’ve stopped barking. But if it’s something more complex like a barrier-reactive dog barking out a window, you can’t necessarily stop that situation from being reinforcing for them once it starts: you can’t control passerby or what the outside dogs do, and both the reaction of the strange dogs and your dog’s experience of barking may be reinforcing it. At which point, if you can’t control the reinforcer, you have to control the thing that allows the behavior to happen - in this example, that’s being able to see outside dogs at all, hence why some people put up opaque window film to remove the dog’s ability to see dogs they want to bark at.

Because barking can have so many triggering stimuli, and it’s so context-dependent, that’s why it’s a really good idea to get a skilled trainer who can help you assess the situation and problem-solve it. @doberbutts, tagging you in for any additional thoughts since you’re much more active in dog training than I am these days.

shrimpsisbugs:

i fucking love chihuahuas, man. i think there are a few factors involved, but i think the problem first and foremost is how chihuahuas are treated by humans.

chihuahuas are rarely allowed to be real dogs. they are treated like decorations and accessories and stuffed animals and cute little novelties

so not only are they rarely trained or thoughtfully socialized and taught to be comfortable with different things, but their autonomy and sense of personal safety is very often disregarded or intentionally threatened by the people around them

people pick them up with little consideration for the dog’s feelings, manhandle them at will and physically force them to comply with human desires. sometimes people intentionally antagonize them because they think it’s funny – for a while there was a very popular Tik Tok by some twenty-somethings dedicated to harassing and frightening an elderly, disabled chihuahua because he made funny noises when he was upset and uncomfortable.

it only stopped because the dog died.

the people responsible claimed to “love” the dog.

chihuahuas’ attempts to communicate discomfort are almost always ignored. dogs usually start out with relatively subtle body language that most people don’t ever learn to read. they might have the whites of their eyes showing, or yawn and lick their lips, or look away, or pin their ears down, or get tense. and when chihuahuas do this, it is almost always disregarded.

so they learn that polite and subtle communication of their discomfort gets ignored, and they start to escalate in an effort to be understood. they might start to growl or snap or bite. they might learn that the best defense is a good offense, that people who approach them are rude and frightening and the only way to get them to back off is to try and be intimidating.

and a lot of the time even that doesn’t work. because hey, look, the chihuahua is growling. isn’t that funny and cute and nonthreatening

there’s more involved but fundamentally at the end of the day, the issue is that chihuahuas are often profoundly mistreated for their entire little lives, psychologically and physically, with no way to communicate or be understood or have their boundaries and needs respected.

and as much as people have made ~aggressive chihuahuas~ into a funney meme, i think that’s fucking tragic.

i’d want to bite people too.

This is spot on. If you learn that the only way you’re going to get any bodily autonomy is to use your teeth, you’re going to be very willing to bite. If you’re never listened to when you say “no” to something without growling and snapping, that’s going to be your go-to.

Because little dogs can’t do the same level of physical harm as bigger dogs, people tend to laugh off their very genuine distress and anger. It’s absolutely not okay, and it’s way too popular on social media.

My rule of thumb is always that if you wouldn’t do something with a 75lb dog, you shouldn’t do it with a 5lb one. And it’s never too late to start! Even littles that you’ve had forever can benefit from being allowed more voluntary engagement in their world, more choices to consent to things, and more freedom to say no.

I, too, make exhausted little sighs when I flop down and am suddenly extremely comfy!

But, okay, here’s what super interesting. I didn’t want to just give you a flippant answer, so I started looking up if sighing is a behavior in other species than humans. Because it’s always worth keeping an eye out for accidental anthropomorphism. Turns out? The science on sighing is fascinating. Stay tuned for intense nerding out, and maybe a bit more of an answer.

First off, we gotta know what a sigh is.

“The sigh is a deep augmented breath with distinct neurobiological, physiological, and psychological properties that distinguish it from a normal eupneic breath. Sighs are typically triggered by a normal eupneic breath and are followed by a respiratory pause, which is referred to as ‘postsigh apnea.’”

In non-jargon, that definition means sighs are a deep breath with a different pattern to it than normal, easy, regular breathing. “Augmented breaths” are frequently used as a synonym for “sighs”, and the best definition I found is that “they comprise prolonged inspiration and increased tidal volume followed by a respiratory pause and several seconds of faster breathing. So a longer than normal inhale where you take in more air than normal, then an exhale, and then pause before breathing in again. Oh hey, look, I found a graph!

The graph is super well labeled, but just to be clear: each cycle of the red line is a normal breath, where what’s being tracked is the movement of the chest wall. The part where the vertical blue bar is, that’s the cycle with a sigh. The red line spikes really high (during inspiration, or breathing in) at that blue patch, and for longer than the normal period of a breath. See how it’s almost like two inhales on top of each other - a normal slope and then another upward spike? That’s the "augmentation” of the normal breath, almost a double inhale without breathing out in-between. Then, after the red line drops (on the exhale) there’s a flat bit. That’s the respiratory pause, which the period after the sigh where you wait before you inhale again.

Apparently people have been tracking sighing scientific for like, over 100 years. The first record of it in academic literature was in 1919. And we know some really cool stuff. All humans sigh spontaneously. Even babies sigh! They do it every few minutes, whereas it’s less frequent but still pretty regular in adults: one study found about once every five minutes, or twelve sighs an hour.

Okay, but why do we sigh? We only sort of know, because there’s a bunch of different things that have to be studied to answer that question. The direct physiological aspect of it is the most well known at this point. You’ve got lots of little sacs lining your lungs, called alveoli, that facilitate gas transfer from the air you breathe into your blood. They make sure oxygen goes in and carbon dioxide gets breathed out. But sometimes they collapse and deflate, which prevents them from doing their job. When you do a big sigh, the air quantity in your lungs ends up being double that of normal, which inflates them again. So sighing is a way of doing lung maintenance, in a sense.

But there’s so much more going on when you sigh than just that! This is the stuff researchers are still working on. They’ve got some pretty solid conclusions to start, but they’re very emphatic that there’s a ton more to learn.

Basically, the main hypothesis right now is that sighing functions as a “reset” for your internal state when it’s out of balance. People sigh more when they’re acutely anxious or stressed, are anticipating a negative outcome like a shock or seeing a negative image, or have chronic anxiety, PTSD, or panic disorders. Higher sigh frequency is also associated with pain: people with chronic low back pain sigh more, and how much they do correlates with how high their pain rating is at the time!

Another aspect of sighing is that it’s frequently associated with periods of relief. Studies have noted that people sigh when they’re able to relax following tension, like if they’re interrupted while trying to do something really mentally taxing, when they finish a task that took a lot of attention for a long time, or if a negative stimulus stops/goes away. The reason behind that is actually thought to be why people sigh so much when they’re upset or in pain: sighing doesn’t just signal relief, but actually cause it! Some studies have found that people experience a temporary reduction in muscle tension right after a spontaneous sigh. (Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to also happen when you sigh on purpose.)

Sighing is also thought to facilitate behavioral and emotional transitions. The frequency at which someone sighs changes even just when they transition from sitting to lying down. People frequently sigh right before they fall asleep or start to wake up. One study found that people sigh more frequently when they go from a situation of being unable to anticipate what’s next to a situation where they know what the outcome will be - regardless of if that outcome is going to be negative or positive! That led the researchers to hypothesize that sighing functions as an emotional reset from states of high internal arousal (a word which here means “the state of feeling awake, activated, and highly reactive to stimuli.”) So sighing might not just bring relief when something really intense ends, but it might also help people prepare for upcoming stress.

Basically, researchers think that sighing may contribute to what they call “psychophysiological flexibility.” That means that sighing helps keep someone in a physiological and emotional state that matches the situation they’re in, and helps the body and mind adapt quickly when something changes. They noted that these types of transitions may involve “anticipatory, activation or recovery responses.” In other words: they think spontaneous sighing is relevant not only when you’re worried about encountering a leopard in the bush, but when you have to hide from the leopard you tripped over, and then also when you’re calming down after the leopard got bored and left.

There’s a whole bunch of research left to do about how exactly spontaneous sighs do what they do, but there’s also a whole other aspect of the behavior that hasn’t really been studied yet: their social function! In humans audible sighing is a salient social signal. (The researchers said the part of the paper addressing this that it is a “lay belief” that sighs have a “communicative function to convey emotions,” which makes the whole thing feel like it was written by aliens observing humans from afar). But they did note that sighs for social communications may be totally different from other types of sighs, since the exhalation is often very exaggerated and doesn’t always occur in tandem with that “augmented” inhale pattern that spontaneous sighs have.

Okay. So. I’ve been a nerd forever, but what about doggo sighs? Why do they occur? Obviously, the research doesn’t give us a direct answer. The majority of the behavioral / situational research on sighing has been done on people, not animals. But it’s pretty well documented lots of animals sigh (it might even be all mammals, I just don’t have a citation for that). And some of the studies that have been done on animals indicated that they, too, sigh in relief when negative situations end or unpleasant stimuli go away.

Let’s go back to my joke at the beginning of this book I’ve written. My first instinct was to be like “who doesn’t sigh in relaxation when they finally get a chance to rest their bones?” That totally matches what’s in the research: getting a chance to rest after activity is often both a behavioral transition and an emotional one, and if there’s any physical discomfort being experienced, physical rest is often is a relief.

It seems fairly probable that dogs sigh when they lay down for at least one of those reasons. I can’t prove that hypothesis, but it tracks with what the science says so far. The situation you described meets the main identified criteria for sighing: there’s the physical transition of laying down, the behavioral/emotional transition of being ready for a period of low/no activity, and the possible relief of pain or discomfort that comes with laying down. We don’t have any any evidence (that I was able to find) of species that sigh for other reasons, or sigh in situations that don’t meet those criteria. We don’t know for sure that this is accurate - this isn’t fact, simply my educated guess. But since sighing seems to help muscles relax and relief discomfort, it seems reasonable to me that a good old sigh after the relief of laying down would make the transition to a resting state feel even better.

Sources:

• Effects of the hippocampus on the motor expression of augmented breaths
• Brainstem activity, apnea, and death during seizures induced by intrahippocampal kainic acid in anaesthetized rats
• The Integrative Role of the Sigh in Psychology, Physiology, Pathology, and Neurobiology
• Sigh rate during emotional transitions: More evidence for a sigh of relief
• The psychophysiology of the sigh: I: The sigh from the physiological perspective
• The psychophysiology of the sigh: II: The sigh from the psychological perspective
• Affect Arousal
• UCLA and Stanford researchers pinpoint origin of sighing reflex in the brain

everythingfox:

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Another great training example. There’s one cardinal rule of baby raising: don’t encourage or let them practice behaviors you don’t want as an adult. Animals won’t understand why something that was always okay before isn’t allowed now, and you’ll be fighting against a very long reinforcement history. I always encourage people to think through what they want the “rules” of the house to be before they even bring an animal home, so they can have in mind from the get-go what they want to make sure they don’t encourage. (This doesn’t mean you can’t modify a behavior when a pet is an adult! But it’s much easier to set things up so it won’t occur in the first place, if you have the chance.)

everythingfox:

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This is a really good example of a very common issue in animal training: that the cue you think you’re giving for a behavior isn’t necessarily what your animal has learned as the cue. You may think your dog is responding to the word “sit”, but as these folks have found out, that’s not what you’ve taught them to do! If you watch closely throughout this video, you’ll notice two things: the tone of voice used and the context.

As the person tests out various words to see how their dog responds, they say it the exact same way each time. Same tone, pitch, and speed. This is actually a really common way we as humans teach cues - and it means our pets often learn the sound of the cue but not the word we use with it. (You can test this yourself! If you have pets, say your most common cues to yourself a couple times and listen to where your voice goes. I tend to say “sit” with a prolonged vowel and an upwards intonation; “lay down” is three syllables of equal length that inflect up from the first and then down past it again; “wait” is a long drawn out aay sound with minimal consonants and no change in pitch.)

This video also shows that the dog is in a very specific situation each time: either waiting for an elevator in what looks like an apartment building, or inside of one. It’s likely that this is the pup’s normal routine, being expected to sit politely to get in and out of elevators to go outdoors. That means context is also likely a cue for the behavior here. If he’s only ever asked to do one thing in those spots, he probably connects any sort of request for a behavior in those locations with the expected response being a sit. (You hear them at one point say “stand”, which could also be a different behavior they’re trying to cue, and if so you can see the context/tone is what is most clear, and so the dog sits instead). We don’t know from this video what the dog does in non-elevator situations, but if we did, that would help us differentiate if this is a tonal cue versus a context one creating the auto-sit behavior.

This type of mis-cuing can be addressed by working on generalizing cues. That’s basically practicing multiple cues in multiple locations, so that your dog doesn’t assume it’s the same thing every time, and actually pays attention to what you’re asking for because they don’t know in advance. Tonal cues can be addressed (if you don’t want them) by changing how you say a well-known cue until your pet is used to variation - but since dogs don’t speak human languages, I personally intentionally use tonal cues to help a dog differentiate between them more easily than just the sound of the cue word.

It’s going to really depend on the specific dog, as well as the person’s relationship with the dog. 

Part of it will depend on how the dog is doing physically and how it does with touch: animals that are in pain or find forceful touch aversive will likely really dislike that type of contact no matter what. Some dogs - often those bred for hunting and a predisposition to not be bothered by physical contact, like labs - tend to enjoy it more, whereas small or very sensitive breeds may find it more inherently aversive even if it’s not painful. 

The other thing that really matter is the relationship between the dog and the person doing the touching. Think about playful roughhousing: in general, we’re way more okay with that type of physical contact from people we’re close to and trust. Even if it’s the sort of contact you and your close friends do all the time, if a stranger came up to you and did the same thing you’d probably be pretty pissed, and it’s not really okay most of the time for a new acquaintance to do either. The same goes for your dog: they may tolerate or enjoy a lot of different types of interactions with people they’re close to or their owners that they absolutely are not okay with from random strangers. 

Dominance theory as people think about it in dogs has been thoroughly disproved; unfortunately, because of the popularity of dominance-based TV “training” shows, that information has been slow to trickle down into the general awareness. 

What you’ve described, as written, sounds like pretty normal overstimulated puppy behavior. He’s at an age where he’s just going to be learning skills like self control and bite inhibition, growling is simply communication (although if it’s not growling in /play/ - like while tugging a toy - it absolutely needs to be listened to as him trying to appropriately establish a boundary). None of those are signs of dominance: you’ve just got a baby, being a normal baby and communicating the best he can. 

I’d suggest checking out some books on dog behavior to help your family understand him a little better: I’d start with “The Other End of the Leash” by Patricia McConnell and “Don’t Shoot the Dog” by Karen Pryor. They’re both easy to read, but will help you learn to interpret his behavior better and help your father look at him through a different lens that’s not dominance-based. 

babyanimalgifs:

Here they come

This seems cute, but I have some concerns.

For one, these puppies appear to be in an airport without leashes or collars on? That’s not responsible management. They also seem pretty young to be on the floor in such a public place - while there are ways to socialize puppies safely before their vaccinations are finished, I wouldn’t personally consider such a high-traffic area to be low enough risk given how many feet could have tracked how many potentially contagious things across that walkway.

Most importantly, though, moving walkways and escalators can be dangerous for dogs because their toenails can get stuck in the grooves! Most people I know with dogs who do public access work either avoid them, or put booties on the pupper’s feet to protect them for the duration.

This is cute and not necessarily harmful, but not something to necessarily emulate with your own dogs given the potential level of risk.

I think putting it back in the nest was a good choice. Obviously, that doesn’t guarantee its survival, but it gives it the best chance without bringing it into human care.

Baby bunnies are time intensive to raise and many rehabilitators won’t take them because they take resources away from less common wildlife that are more likely to be successfully released, from what I understand. Putting it back means that if mom comes back to the nest - which isn’t guaranteed after a predation event - it’ll be there for her to find. It’s hard to think that it might have still died, but in those cases, there’s very little you could have done to help. I know people will say take it to a rehabber if you can find one, but that’s also not guaranteed that they’ll take it or that it’ll survive, and then you’ve removed any chance it had if you’d put it back.

Baby bunny season leads to lots of incidents like this with dogs. I’d suggest checking your yard for nests occasionally, and keeping your dog on leash and away from the area for a while if you find one. Their movement and noises frequently trigger intense prey drive / predatory drift in a lot of dogs, so proactive monitoring and avoidance is your best option.

all-unicorns-fart-rainbows:

cocoa-y-moi:

babyfacerae:

thenatsdorf:

Milkshake.

Lmao omg

Need an extra ass dog like this

@why-animals-do-the-thing

I have no idea why the puppy is suckling like that. It could be just a very extra puppy, or a pup that isn’t very good at nursing (and as not-a-vet I can’t rule out an actual issue). Either way, that momma dog is very, very patient and tolerant. 

Games like tug and fetch, or training games that involve getting on and off objects or strength training are all ways you can help wear a dog out when they can’t go on walks. I like training “sit pretty” and “doggy pushups” (sitting up on hind legs, and down-sit-down patterns respectively) as long as the dog is medically cleared for them. 

Don’t forget, though, that a lot of what tires dogs out on walks is the mental stimulus of the sights, sounds, and smells. When you can’t take a dog outside, you want to make sure you provide lots of enrichment such as puzzle toys, chews, and novel experiences to help replace that aspect of it. 

Not if you can find another option, no. 

What your mom did worked because it startled your dog badly and made him afraid of the trash can in general. That’s effective, but not very kind, because now that dog has to be in close proximity to an object he’s been conditioned to be afraid of probably every day of the rest of his life. 

Using aversives to change behavior for things like counter-surfing is a fairly common practice that a lot of even positive trainers still recommend. The idea behind putting cans on the trash bin (or stacking pots and pans on the counter) is that when the animal engages with the thing it isn’t supposed to, the counter / trash can itself will “provide” the aversive stimulus of things being loud and scary as they fall, and the animal will avoid it afterwards. It’s certainly more effective than trying to punish the dog when you catch him doing that, because it’s very hard to apply an external punishing stimulus accurately enough that the animal actually associates it with the thing you want them to stop doing. But it still leaves us with the problems that it’s very negative for the animal, has the potential to actually hurt them if they get hit when the cans fall, and leaves you with an animal who is genuinely scared of a fixture of your house - not to mention that you haven’t taught him what you actually want him to do instead. 

If your new dog hasn’t learned to get into the trash yet, try to prevent him from learning he can. Get a trash can with a lid that seals tightly, so there’s no tantalizing smells leaking out an encouraging him to investigate. Maybe even just put the trash can in a cupboard where he can’t get to it. 

If he’s already learned he can get into the trash, the best option is honestly managing him so that he doesn’t get the opportunity again. Trash cans are basically the holy grail of forbidden human food, not to mention all the interesting stinky smells that emit from it as the food inside decomposes. Once your dog knows it is there and how awesome it is to get into, asking him to have the self restraint to not do so is a boss-level fight. Better to just make it so he doesn’t ever get a chance to practice the behavior you don’t like (and maybe, hopefully, his interest in it will start to self extinguish if investigating the trash can never yields interesting results). You could get a trash can that actually seals so he can’t open it even if he knocks it over, or weigh the bottom of the trash can so it can’t be tipped. If he’s able to get into a cupboard to get at it, put child locks on the doors. You could put the trash can in a room that has a door your can shut (like a pantry) when you’re not immediately present. 

Part of why your dog may be interested in the trash can is out of boredom, so in addition, make sure he’s got lots of varied enrichment to work on. All dogs need physical and mental stimulation, but young dogs especially. If you see him checking out the trash can, make sure he’s had enough exercise and give him something to do with his brain (but be careful to time it so he doesn’t associate the trash can with the cue for fun things to happen, or he’ll never leave it alone). If you can’t prevent his interest in the trash cans with management, or it looks like he’s fixating on them no matter what you do, definitely find a positive reinforcement-based trainer to figure out what to do from there. And, of course, you can help him and yourself by taking super stinky trash bags outside rather than letting them sit there and be tantalizing. 

I can’t really tell you without seeing a video. It’s normal for adult dogs to correct puppies when they’re being jerks (aka normal puppies) because that’s how they learn appropriate manners for dog interactions, but what you’ve described does sound like a fairly harsh correction for such young puppies.