Why Knowing Your Dog's Body Language Can Help With Your Dog's Training

As dog owners, we spend a lot of time with our dogs. If you're anything like me, you'll often have wondered "what is he thinking?" and "what does he want?" Most of the time we will never know, but by being aware of what a dog's body language means we can quite often discover what it is feeling.

Once you know what a dog is feeling, then dog training becomes a lot easier. For example, dogs have very short attention spans when they are young and quickly become tired and distracted. In a lot of cases, they get like this a lot quicker than you think. If you understand the classic signs of a dog getting tired, you can easily tell when to stop the training.

Some dogs also get aggressive when they aren't left alone. Surprisingly, the body language a dog uses to tell other dogs or people to back off can easily be confused with other completely different emotions. By knowing the signs of a dog being aggressive you can take steps to calm down the situation. This is especially useful if another dog is nearby, as you can defuse the aggression before a dog fight occurs.

There are plenty of other emotions you can identify and then use to your advantage when training your dog. Dogs would often communicate in the wild through body language and if you can learn how to identify the common signs then it takes the guess work out of owning a dog. If you can understand how the dog feels, you will also find you have a much greater bond with him than you had before.