DOGS HATE HUGGING

In an article (a really LONG article) published in Psychology Today, Stanley Coren, who studies canine behavior at the University of British Columbia, makes a strong case against the dog hug, arguing that although humans love embracing their canine pals, the physical contact stresses dogs out. He says that if you know what to look for, their annoyance becomes obvious.
1. A dog’s most common outward signal of stress or anxiety is when he “turns his head away from whatever is bothering or worrying him, sometimes also closing his eyes, at least partially.”
2. Also, just like humans, dogs have whites of the eye – if you see it, it means the animal is stressed.
3. An anxious or stressed-out dog’s ears will be lowered or slicked against the side of his head.
In the Psychology Today piece, Coren describes how he combed through Flickr and did a Google image search for terms like “hug dog” or “love dog,” and found 250 photos of people hugging their dogs. He and some colleagues then analyzed these photos by rating the dog’s body language, looking for those signs of dog-anxiety. Nearly 82 percent of the dogs in the selected photos showed at least one sign of stress. Coren explains why the restriction of an embrace may annoy or frighten a dog: Dogs are designed for swift running. In times of stress or threat the first line of defense that a dog uses is not his teeth, but rather his ability to run away. Behaviorists believe that depriving a dog of that course of action by immobilizing him with a hug can increase his stress level and, if the dog’s anxiety becomes significantly intense, he may bite. So: to let your dog know you love him, give him a pat on the head or a nice belly rub or a treat.
* My neighbor’s dog hates hugging … everything but my leg.
* I could have stopped after just the first sentence, but frankly, I’ve got a lot of time to fill this hour.
* And Stanley Coren has a lot of time to fill in his life.
* Check if the dog’s turning its head, check if it’s closing its eyes, check if it’s showing you the whites of its eyes, check if its ears are lowered or slicked against the side of its head, then check the kitchen ’cause you’ve just let dinner get all burned.
* At first I doubted the seriousness of this study, but when he said he based it on pictures from the Internet, I knew it was the real thing.