"She just does that" and Other Myths About Dog Behaviour | Kate Knows Dogs

To behave is costly. Like all creatures, dogs behave to enact change. Your dog's behaviour may help relieve discomfort, access rewards, or avoid some other kind of conflict. Behaviour can entertain, it can achieve, it can soothe. Ultimately, behaviour is designed to change, not to maintain. 

When our dogs behave in ways that are unexpected, we often forget to ask ourselves what function the behaviour seems to serve. What happens before the behaviour? What happens after? Does the same behaviour happen in other contexts? What's similar or different about it in those contexts? 

Because behaviour is functional, it's often possible to figure out why it's happening. Take a step back from your initial impression and get curious. Whatever their motivation, your dog isn't doing it just to be cute (unless cute comes with a side of cookies or cuddles).

Here are some behaviours that I've recently heard described as "quirky" personality traits, unskilled training, or simple confusion lately. 

In a discussion forum, someone asked if anyone else's dogs "skip when they're happy." Some of the replies pointed out that this is a serious gait abnormality, and that the dog was likely experiencing pain or dysfunction. I was grateful for those replies. 

Too many of them, though, said that they had dogs who skipped too. They said it wasn't painful, but just something their dogs do sometimes. Nothing to worry about. 

A skipping gait happens when one footfall is missing or off-beat from the expected pattern for that gait. Think of a time when one of your feet landed off its normal rhythm. Why did that happen? 

If you're thinking, "Well, that's limping!" you're right. In dogs, this is called lameness, although that term has fallen out of favour with people. If you're walking and you avoid placing one of your feet on the ground, you're either playing hopscotch or it hurts to step on that foot. 

In this dog's case, he consistently skipped on one of his limbs. This is not an expression of happiness. Something was preventing the dog from using his leg normally. If your dog ever stops using one of their limbs properly, you can bet that they're painful or otherwise sick. They'll need to see a veterinarian. 

OK, I know that it sounds gross. But I really did hear a story of a dog who had, as the owner guessed, "learned to save time on potty trips." While he was slow to line himself up for a poop, once he was squatting and straining, he would evacuate his bladder at the same time. 

I don't know about you, but my dogs have always seemed to enjoy peeing on things. They might plod along before suddenly turning around, sniffing furiously, and dribbling a little calling card on exactly the right spot. Some of them have seemed quite particular about their pooping as well. I'm not sure what dog would feel it necessary or beneficial to save time by doing both at once. I'm not sure that they know how to do it deliberately. 

If straining to poop causes your bladder to evacuate, then you're having incontinence. Sometimes this happens as a result of holding it for too long, and sometimes it's because they can't relax one sphincter without letting go of the other. In any case, it's a sign of pain or dysfunction, usually in the hind end. Even if there was no incontinence, taking a long time to get into position to poop is itself abnormal. 

In this case, since there doesn't seem to be a plausible function for the behaviour, I would guess that it's physiological. This is not a result of learning.

Video above: Rory the terrier puppy has a painful post-MRI poop. 

Tense faces and hunched postures can occur for a number of reasons. When it's your dog's default, it gets easy to write it off as "normal" for them even if it's not normal for dogs in general. 

A hunched posture in a dog is not the same as in a person. In people, slouching often results in a bit of a hunched shoulder. It's considered lazy, although it can be compensatory or related to laxity in the joints. Humans stand upright. Slouching is a natural result of unopposed gravity. In dogs, a hunched posture is fighting gravity! It's a result of flexion; engagement of the muscles. 

A dog who looks hunched over is probably not demonstrating poor posture, but signalling – you guessed it – some kind of pain. It could be in their body, or belly, or skin, or head. Wherever it is, something, somewhere isn't quite right. They'll need a thorough workup to figure it out.

Video above: Greta the border collie shows her hunched posture, holding her head below her topline. This isn't slinky border collie creeping; she’s standing tall, with her knees nearly straight. She had compromised cruciate ligaments and IBD. 

Time and again, I see posts on social media about dogs needing to build muscle in a certain area of their body. It's often the hindquarters or the epaxial muscles along the spine. The person says they're looking for exercises or diet change to help their dog build back muscle that they believe that the dog lost while resting for a couple of weeks, or after a lazy winter.

Even a fat dog who doesn't move very much should not have a prominent spine. If your dog is well muscled in the front, and seems just a little too skinny in the back, it's probably not because they skipped leg day. There's a reason they're using their front more. Have you tried to figure out why? 

This kind of muscle imbalance is related to compensation. When your dog shifts their weight to allow one part of their body to take responsibility for the work of another, the part doing the work gets bulky while the part resting gets skinny. Yes, that calls for a vet visit. Such a dog may benefit from a referral to a neurologist or an orthopaedic specialist.

In a professional educational experience recently, I watched someone explain a dog's naughty behaviour during a fitness session as a lack of training by the owner. This rubbed me the wrong way for a few reasons.

First of all, as I get more involved in the canine fitness space, I'm learning to spot signs of pain and fatigue with more accuracy earlier in a session. I now notice that sometimes, my dog offers only a few repetitions of a behaviour I asked of her before she starts to offer something else. 

If the previous behaviour had been rewarded consistently, why would she change her strategy? You really do need to examine your own mechanics, because if the dog is frustrated or confused, then changing their strategy is a fair result. If they're very frustrated, you may see more emotional behaviour because behavioural extinction (when an expected reward becomes unreliable) is uncomfortable. 

If your mechanics are fair, and your dog doesn't seem to show signs of frustration, then you might need to adjust what you're asking of your dog. Even simple behaviours repeated many times will cause fatigue. Think of all the office workers with carpal tunnel syndrome from using a computer mouse! It's not like they're lifting heavy loads, but repetition, often for long periods of time and without rotating to other activities, can lead to fatigue or even injury. 

Another reason this felt bad to hear is that it blamed the guardian for the behaviour. Sure, if your dog has never had manners, and you've never tried to train them, then there may not be enough information to suggest that this is a sign of pain. But if your dog is normally a model citizen, and only becomes a hooligan when you ask them to do certain exercises or after several repetitions of an exercise, it’s probably not your failure. It’s important information to take to your vet team. The same goes for if your dog just can't seem to mature out of their puppy frenzies, even after months or years of hard work. 

Video above: Rory the terrier puppy offers a whole bunch of behaviours other than the one I was hoping to see. 

Yep, if you know me, you might be tired of hearing about pain. Maybe you think these are all obvious. I'm sure they are when I write them this way, but in each of these cases, it wasn't obvious to the speaker that what they were describing was abnormal behaviour. 

Remember that the simplest answer is usually the correct one. If you're trying to figure out the function of a behaviour, and there isn't a simple answer, that's a pretty good sign that the behaviour is medical. If you find yourself attaching human values or politics onto your dog, take a step back. Zoom out. Ask what changed before the behaviour occurred and what changed after.

Behaviour, or even the absence of a behaviour, serves a function for your dog. Be kind and get curious before you dismiss them. And don't forget: "wait and see" is a silly approach. If you've noticed a problem, you can already see it. It's time to do something about it.