Question:

Hi everyone, I’m very interested in the ‘tail’ body language of dogs. I believe Jerry wrote this: If the tail is kept up underneath, means he’s very uncomfortable, nervous, scared.  If tail curves around flanks when he’s sitting or laying shows he’s comfortable.  Straight out behind him indicates  very comfortable.  Sitting on it, with a slight curl at the base, indicates he’s in the process of learning something. Jerry "the tail reader" Howe Has Jerry, or anyone else a view of what a dog is really feeling/thinking/doing when their tail is ‘wagging’? Serious question. Regards, Marilyn — http://www.angelfire.com/mb/dogtraining/homepage.html Turn negative to positive and be positive to learn –

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> Hi everyone, > I’m very interested in the ‘tail’ body language of dogs. > I believe Jerry wrote this: > If the tail is kept up underneath, means he’s very > uncomfortable, nervous, scared.  If tail curves > around flanks when he’s sitting or laying shows > he’s comfortable.  Straight out behind him indicates >  very comfortable.  Sitting on it, with a slight curl at > the base, indicates he’s in the process of learning something. > Jerry "the tail reader" Howe > Has Jerry, or anyone else a view of what a dog is really > feeling/thinking/doing when their tail is ‘wagging’? > Serious question. > Regards, > Marilyn > — > http://www.angelfire.com/mb/dogtraining/homepage.html > Turn negative to positive and be positive to learn –

Cut/Pasted reprinted without the permission of Kevin Behan Excerpt from a newsletter:    Why Do . . .    . . . dogs wag their tails?      The quick answer is that a dog wags its tail for a reason which seems self-evident enough, that being it’s the tell-tale mark of a friendly dog. Indeed, anyone who’s stood too near the pounding tail of a prototypical friendly breed such as a labrador retriever, can take a veritable shellacking from the wack of its wiggle. But if friendliness were an altogether accurate interpretation, why is it that so many people are bitten by a dog that’s wagging its tail, often very enthusiastically? For this and other reasons, the science of behaviorism has called into question the popular wisdom that dogs wag their tails out of friendliness. The definition that the science of behaviorism prefers is that a dog is wagging its tail as a  submissive overture to a superior member of its pack. For example, if one observes an inferior wolf approaching a superior one, tail-wagging is a pronounced feature of his body language.      But this isn’t a wholly satisfying either because when adult wolves regurgitate food to their cubs, the cubs’ tails are wagging and so are the adults. Are the adults being submissive to the cubs and the cubs to the adults all at the same time? That seems like a confusing scrambling of signals and it’s my experience that the nature of behavior is never that ambiguous. The recurring theme of this newsletter will be to make the point that  submission and dominance while expedient, convenient, and seemingly reasonable means of making sense of canine behavior, can