Essays · How dogs work
Bouncing, whining, mouthing, spinning. People read one as happy and one as a problem, and the dog is often in the same state for both.
About five minutes
A dog at the door when a visitor arrives. Jumping, high pitched noise, spinning, mouthing at sleeves. Everybody says he is so excited to see you.
Maybe. The same dog does the same thing at the vet.
Because underneath they largely are. High arousal is a state of the nervous system and it looks much the same regardless of whether the thing causing it is wanted or unwanted.
Fast breathing, dilated pupils, high movement, poor impulse control, difficulty taking food or taking it hard. That list describes a dog greeting a beloved person and a dog who is genuinely frightened.
Arousal tells you how switched on the dog is. It does not tell you whether they are enjoying it, and people read the valence off their own expectations rather than off the dog.
Because at high arousal, learning does not happen. Whatever you are trying to teach at the door is not going in, in either case.
And because dogs who live at high arousal tip over into snapping, and everyone calls it unprovoked. A dog who has been wound up for four minutes of greeting and then gets hugged is not unprovoked when they air snap. They were at the ceiling and something added to it.
Look at what happens when the thing stops.
A dog who was enjoying it settles fast, shakes off once, and goes and lies down. A dog who was struggling stays up for a long time, keeps checking, cannot settle, and may go and drink a lot of water.
Look at whether they can take food. Not whether they will, whether they can. A dog who takes a treat and drops it, or takes your fingers with it, is over threshold whatever their tail is doing.
And look at whether they can move away. A dog who is enjoying something can leave and come back. A dog who is stuck orbiting the thing and cannot disengage is not having a nice time.
A wagging tail means arousal, not happiness. This is worth repeating because it is the single most common misread in the general public and it is how people get bitten by a dog who was wagging.
Fast, high, stiff and small is a different signal from loose, mid height and full body. Both are wags.
Lower the ceiling rather than managing the peak. A dog who lives at a six all day hits ten at the door. A dog who lives at a three hits a seven at the same door and can still hear you.
Most of that is the previous piece on daily routine, and it is unglamorous, and it works.
For the door specifically, stop practising the arrival. Gate the dog away from the greeting for six weeks. Every chaotic greeting is a rehearsal, and the dog has usually had several hundred of them.
Then reintroduce it at a distance where the dog can still eat, which will be further from the door than you expect, and build back from there.
If you would rather just ask someone
Tell us the age, what is happening, and what you have already tried. You will get a straight answer about what we would do, whether or not that involves us.
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