Police Learn to read Dogs Tails
Why do Dogs Wag their Tails?
Why Does a Dog Wag Its Tail?

Police learning to read dog tails

By Holly Edwards
After controversy about two videotaped dog shootings by Midstate police officers, animal behaviour specialists with the American Humane Association began two days of training yesterday on non-deadly methods of dealing with vicious dogs.

More than two dozen police and animal-control officers from throughout Middle Tennessee — including 10 officers from Hendersonville, where the most recent dog shooting occurred — were scheduled to attend.
''I don't want to second-guess any police officer, but if you can avoid an encounter where you have to shoot somebody's pet, that's a good thing,'' said Sgt. Ty Wilson. ''We're duty-bound to protect the public from vicious dogs, and we need any help we can get on how to defuse that kind of encounter.''

In addition to learning to deal with vicious dogs, Wilson said his department hopes to avoid the ''media blast'' surrounding the Cookeville dog shooting in January 2003 and the dog shooting in Hendersonville last month.
During yesterday's session, animal behaviourist Penny Scott-Fox told the group that the key to knowing whether a dog will bite lies in understanding its body language.

Pointing to projected images of dogs in a variety of stances, she said ''soft and squishy'' dogs with blinking eyes, wiggly bodies, and ears folded back are safe. Stiff, rigid dogs with the whites of their eyes showing, ears erect and teeth bared are probably not.

''You can just feel it when a dog's about to bite,'' said Scott-Fox, a trainer with the American Humane Association. ''Their eyes get really hard, and you know what you're in for.''
Safe dogs, on the other hand, are ''loose, wiggly and soft. They snake across the floor, and they look soft and squishy,'' she said.

Animal behaviour training is a growing trend in law enforcement, and all new police recruits in the state are required to complete a two-hour course on dealing with aggressive animals, said Beth Denton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Safety, which oversees law-enforcement training.

The statewide training was launched in 2003 after the Cookeville dog shooting, she said.
Several officers attending yesterday's event said they learned all about dealing with aggressive people when they went through the police academy years ago but were given no information about dealing with aggressive animals.

''This kind of training is a growing trend because we're getting a lot more calls now where we have to deal with animals,'' said Sgt. Jim Ring. ''Almost everyone has a pet of some sort.''

In the most recent dog shootings in Cookeville and Hendersonville, police officials determined that officers followed proper procedures.

However, Kerri Burns, a former police officer and trainer for the American Humane Association, said it's rarely necessary to kill an aggressive dog to stop it.

''In a small percentage of cases, the dog just won't stop,'' she said. ''It lunges at you, it might be a trained attack dog, and it just won't stop.''

Before using lethal force, Burns suggested officers try several other measures first.

Studies have shown that more than 90 percent of vicious-dog encounters can be defused using the humane association's method of ''stop, drop and roll,'' she said.

The first step is to stop and assess the dog's body language, then drop your eyes so you're not staring down at the dog. Direct eye contact is a canine method of communicating aggression, Burns said.

After looking away, officers should gently roll their shoulder, slowly turning away until they're standing sideways to the dog.

If the dog is still in attack mode, the next step is to say, ''Stop, sit down,'' in a deep, low, loud voice. If the dog continues to advance, officers should try pepper spray or putting a nightstick in the dog's mouth.

Taser guns can also be used, Burns said, but only when an animal control officer is standing nearby with a catchpole. Otherwise, she said, the dog will have to be repeatedly zapped to keep it under control.

Dogs become aggressive when they feel trapped and scared, said Scott-Fox, and easing a tense confrontation with an angry dog involves giving that dog a way out of the situation.

The key is to analyse each part of a dog's body language, and then put everything together to look at the dog as a whole picture, she said.

''A lot of times, dogs just don't understand what's expected of them and most aggression occurs out of fear,'' she said. ''Most dogs, given the choice, will run away.''

Officer Wilson said he has had to use pepper spray several times on vicious dogs. An officer in his department had to shoot a dog last year when it attacked police as they arrested its owner.

''It breaks your heart to shoot an animal,'' he said. ''But if it's a choice between the dog or me, you got to protect yourself.''

The story so far
Two videotaped dog shootings in Tennessee have drawn national attention and prompted the American Humane Association to offer dog behaviour training for police and animal control officers.

The most recent shooting occurred in Hendersonville on Oct. 12 when a policeman shot a Chow-German Shepherd mix dog that had been acting aggressively toward an animal control officer. A police review board concluded this month that the officer was justified in shooting the dog.

Another shooting occurred in Cookeville on Jan. 1, 2003 when James and Pamela Smoak, along with their 17-year-old son, and two dogs, a terrier-bulldog mix named Patton and a puppy named Cassie, were returning to their North Carolina home after spending a few days in Nashville.

Their car was pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol and two Cookeville police officers on I-40 near Cookeville's exit 287.

Police stopped the family after a motorist reported that a green station wagon had passed by at high speed and that money had been thrown from the window. What really happened, an investigation later found, was that James Smoak left his wallet on top of his car after getting gas. Near Mt. Juliet, the wallet fell onto the roadway and $440 in cash swirled in the air.

Suspecting a crime, police ordered the couple and their son out of the car at gunpoint and handcuffed them. The action was captured by a dashboard video camera in the trooper's cruiser.

Minutes after the stop, Patton jumped out and ran toward the officers — some say playfully, others say aggressively — and Cookeville Officer Eric Hall shot the dog once in the head with a shotgun.

In a settlement announced this month in U.S. District Court, the Smoak’s will be paid $77,500 to settle a lawsuit against the city of Cookeville and Hall for the mistaken police stop and dog shooting.

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 Why do dogs wag their tails?

by Jessica Whiteside
dogwaggingtail
"Hi! I'm happy to see you!" declares the wagging tail of an approaching dog. Or does it?
One theory suggests tail wagging is a physiological response to get rid of excess energy in dogs who are torn between urges to advance and retreat, says Dwight Tapp, a PhD candidate in psychology at U of T. But, by far, the most common explanation is that tail wagging is a form of social communication.

Tail wagging is done for a purpose - to communicate an emotional state to other living things.
"Tail wagging is done for a purpose - to communicate an emotional state to other living things - rather than simply happening as a result of an emotional state," explains Tapp. "For example, dogs don't generally wag their tails when they are alone. A dog approaching a food bowl will likely be excited but will not wag its tail if there is no other animal (human or non-human) in the room. The wag would occur only with an audience."

Along with signalling emotion, tail wagging also helps dogs communicate their rank, says Tapp. Highly social creatures, dogs have an ancestral need for hierarchies in which each dog holds a rank in the pack to determine who eats first, who enters a walkway first and so on.

"A dominant dog will often display an aggressive wag - a tail held high and wagging slightly - when confronted by a dog or person it does not know," explains Tapp. "Low ranking dogs, on the other hand, will often begin a new exchange with their tails between their legs, wagging only slightly."

Wagging also spreads pheromones, an important part of canine communication.  
Wagging also spreads pheromones, an important part of canine communication, Tapp says. When a dog moves its tail, the muscles around the anus contract and press on glands that release a scent unique to each animal, enabling others to determine its sex, age and social status. Submissive or frightened dogs may not wag their tails because they want to minimize the expression of these glands and avoid drawing attention to themselves, he notes. 

Both the position and speed of the tail wag signal different emotional states. A tail held high and wagging quickly is often a sign of play or euphoria although it can also signal an aggressive dog. A horizontal tail that is wagging steadily likely means the dog is studying something closely while submissive dogs tuck their tails between their legs to signal fear or indicate they do not pose a threat.

How fast a dog wags its tail depends on breed and personality, Tapp says. Spaniels often wag their tails at the slightest provocation whereas Rottweilers don't wag nearly as much. "Not every dog is adept at 'tail-speak,'" he says. "Just as some people are less articulate than others, some dogs don't communicate well with their tails."

Tail wagging speed has more to do with genetics than ability, he adds. The tails of some breeds are just less mobile. Dogs with small, tightly curled tails such as pugs and those with tails that have been shortened such as boxers may also rely on ear positions to express emotion. Dogs with long bushy tails such as German shepherds, huskies and retrievers have little trouble with tail talk.

"Terriers fall somewhere in-between," says Tapp. "Their tails are short but what they lack in size, they make up for in mobility, conveying happiness by wagging their tails at very fast intervals that often extend to include the rump."

P. Dwight Tapp is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology. His research, supervised by Professor Bill Milgram at U of T at Scarborough, combines behavioral testing with MRI images to examine how complex cognitive functions and brain structures of dogs change as they age. After completing his PhD at U of T this summer, Tapp will be pursuing post-doctoral research at the University of California-Irvine.

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Why Does A Dog Wag Its Tail

Author Unknown

It is often said, by laymen and experts alike, that if a dog wags its tail it must be friendly.  This is not so.  The error is similar to the one made by people who insist that if a cat wags its tail it must be angry.  The only emotional condition which all tail-waggers (both canine and feline) share is a state of conflict.  This is true of almost all back-and-forth movements in animal communications.

When an animal is in conflict it feels pulled in two different directions at the same time.  It wants to advance and retreat simultaneously, or to turn left and turn right.  Since each urge cancels out the other, the animal stays where it is, but in a state of tension.  The body, or part of it, begins to move off in one direction, obeying one urge, then stops and moves in the opposite direction.  This leads to a whole range of stylized visual signals in the body language of the different species.  There are neck-twistings, head-bobbings, leg-bendings, foot-jiggings, shoulder-turnings, body-leanings, tail-flickings and-in cats and dogs-the well known tail-waggings.

What exactly is happening in the mind of the tail-wagging dog?  Essentially the animal wants to stay and wants to go away.  The urge to go away is simple - it is caused by fear.  The urge to stay is more complex.  In fact, there is not one urge but several.  The dog may wish to stay because it is hungry, friendly, aggressive, or for any other reason.  This is why it is impossible to label tail-wagging as having a single meaning.  It is a visual signal that must always be read in context, along with the other actions that are taking place at the same time.  Some examples will help to clarify this:

Puppies do not wag their tails when they are very young.  The earliest recorded tail-wagging was observed in a 17 day old pup, but this was unusual.  By 30 days about 50% of pups are tail-waggers and the activity reaches full maturity at the age of 49 days.  (These are average figures, there being some breed variation.)  The context in which tail wagging first appears is when the puppies are feeding from the bitch.  As they line up along her belly and she starts to suckle them, their tails begin to wag furiously.  It is easy to see this as "friendly delight" on the part of the young animals, but if this were so, then why did the tail wagging not show itself earlier, when the puppies were,say, 2 weeks old?  The milk was just as important to them then and their tails were well developed, so what was missing?  The answer is inter-puppy conflict.  At the age of 2 weeks the pups cuddle up together for warmth and comfort, but there is as yet no serious rivalry.  By the age of 6/7 weeks, however, when the tail-wagging is reaching its full expression, the pups have arrived at the social stage of bullying and rough and tumble.  To feed from the mother they must come very close together - close to the same bodies that were just now nipping and chasing them.  This causes fear, but the fear is overpowered by the urge to feed from the closely spaced teats.  So when they are being suckled, the pups are in a state of conflict between hunger and fear - wanting to stay at the teat and not wanting to get too close to the other pups.  It is this conflict that gives rise to the earliest expressions of tail-wagging in dogs.

The next context in which it appears is when the pups are food-begging from the adult animals.  The same conflict is in operation here.  As the young ones come close to the mouth of the adult, to seek food, they are again forced into close proximity with one another.

Later, as adults, when they greet one another after a separation, they add tail-wagging to their other re-contact signals.  Here, friendliness and apprehension combine to produce the emotional conflict.  Wagging also accompanies sexual advances, where sexual attraction and fear are simultaneously present.  And, most important, it is seen when some aggressive approaches are made.  In these instances the tail-wagging animal, although hostile, is also fearful - once again in a conflict of simultaneous moods.

The quality of the wagging varies.  In more submissive animals, the wags are loose and wide.  In aggressive animals they are stiff and short.  The more subordinate a tail wagger is, the lower it holds the wagging tail.  The confident animal wags a tail that is fully erect.

If all of this can be observed by watching dogs (or wolves) encountering one another in a variety of social contexts, why has tail-wagging so often been misunderstood and labelled simply a sign of friendlyness?  The answer is that we are much more familiar with man/dog greetings than we are with dog/dog greetings.  If we have several dogs, they are usually together all the time, but we and they are repeatedly parting and reuniting every day.  So what we see, time and again is the friendly, submissive dog greeting its master or mistress, on whom it looks as the dominant member of it's pack.  It's overpowering mood on these occasions is one of friendliness and excitement at seeing its pack leader again, but this attraction is tinged with slight apprehension, which is enough to trigger the conflict-response of tail wagging.

We find this hard to believe because we do not like to think that our pets have anything but love for us.  The idea that they also fear us slightly  does not appeal to us.  But think of our size in relation to theirs.  We tower over them and this alone is worrying for them.  Add to this the fact that we dominate over them in so many ways and they are dependant on us for so many aspects of their survival, and it is not really surprising that their mood is a mixed one.

Finally, in addition to their visual signals, tail-wags are also believed to transmit odour signals.  Again, this is not at all easy for us to understand unless we make ourselves contemplate the world from the viewpoint of the dog.  Dogs have personal scents that are transmitted from anal glands.  Tense, vigorous tail wagging movements have the effect of rhythmically squeezing these glands.  If the tail is in an upright position, as it is with confident dogs, the rapid and rythmic flagging of the tail will dramitically increase the ejection of anal scents from these glands.  Although our human noses are not efficient enough to appreciate these personal scents, they have very great significance for the animals themselves.  It is this added bonus that has undoubtedly led to the major role that the simple to-and-fro conflict movement of tailwagging now enjoys in canine social life.
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Tail Wagging in Dogs
 Dogs and Their Tails

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