What does your dog feel?

Sensory perception in dogs

Touch and texture are an important part of how dogs perceive the world they live in.

Touch is often a key element in how dogs interact with one another and often touch will affect their response.

Play and tactile interaction is often fundamental to canine enrichment and wellbeing. 

Dogs are sentient beings who by nature are curious and love to explore the world through their senses, touch is a huge part of conversation with dogs. It’s another reason why dogs and humans have such a strong bond, and we find them so vital to our own wellbeing in lots of cases.

Play,

Dogs are individual and this means they will have preferences in the type of energy and touch they enjoy in play.

Some dogs will love the robust tussles they have during play, using their body to barge, push and shove. Pawing and pinning another dog as if bringing down a prey animal.

Play often looks like one animal being predator, the other adopting a prey like response. One dog will initiate play with a play bow, with the likely response from the other being a mirror of what is being given in behaviour. This is an energy exchange leading to coming together, or a potential chase in lots of cases depending on the dogs concerned.

Healthy play should look like a mutual exchange of interaction.

If a dog is being continually pinned or bombarded with paws/mouthed and excessive energy, this could lead to an overload of senses which will be stressful and potentially emotionally damaging.

It could lead to over stimulation of play drive, which in tern could lead to aggression. 

So, managing play drive is important, particularly in the case of breeds where breeding selection has enhanced the triggers for touch arousal.

One dog will often target the neck area of another dog, or hind quarters in play. Where dogs are longer coated, especially hair around their faces and neck this will be an area of focus for another dog to mouth.

They will often jump on another dog, and flat nosed dogs (brachycephalic) will often get in the faces of dogs purely for visual reasons, this will often be part of their preference for interaction.

Touch sensitivity is often the reason play can become aggression and reactivity very quickly. 

Depending on individual dog, breed traits and experience, touch can be a trigger for arousal leading to a specific drive. (behaviour)

Example,

Lead aggression is often seen when two dogs come together whilst on leash, they are making their assessments through their senses and eternalising each other’s energy. Often the feel of the restraint from the leash, or a change in pressure applied to the leash can lead to an instinctual reaction in the moment.

Anxious/reactive dogs are often less reactive when they’ve got space and freedom to move, and a flight option.

A response to touch can change in the moment, remembering dogs are instinctive and behave in the moment will help us greater understand how they respond and behave relating to touch.

Some dogs might not enjoy being touched by strangers or other dogs they’re not familiar with.

A typical example of this is when humans approach a dog the tendency is present a palm over the dog’s head, coming down on top to stroke or pat the top of head.

The dog often hasn’t had the chance to make their assessment, this can unsettle the dog which could lead to a reaction.

Using touch in our training and knowing where/how to use training equipment affectively in our conversations with our dogs will go a long way to enhancing our communication.

Understanding what we are seeing in canine interaction will help us to anticipate potential flash points for reactive behaviours and keep all dogs safe.

Knowing that in some breeds this touch sensitivity has been enhanced even more by selective breeding will help us understand how to manage and handle our dogs by the application of training and contingency for potential behaviours.

We tend to live a neurotypical structured world for our own learning and training, sometimes we don’t always consider what make’s individuals’ function and how best to approach the richness of neurodiversity.

If we relate this to how we approach dog training and development, appreciate that dogs are highly intelligent sentient beings with a very specific cognitive ability based on animalistic instinctual behaviours, with a whole host of sensory superpowers which way outperform our own and that of many other species in lots of cases, we can start to greater understand how to communicate with them.

Touch and feel of external energy are key factors in training and canine communication.