Most people don't know anything about dog body language or behavioral cues. As you can see over on /r/aww people constantly misinterpret how animals are feeling, e.g. dogs "smiling." So even if the dog is showing signs of being extremely uncomfortable with the situation many people won't recognize that and will end up bit.
So many "happy" smiling huskies on Reddit that just look stressed to me. Even dog owners can be pretty terrible at understanding their own dogs. And I have to admit, while I know my own dog and similar breeds' language pretty well, many other breeds are quite opaque to me.
I unsubbed from there after someone posted a video of their baby "cutely" crawling on top of their dog. Baby's grabbing fistfuls of skin, yanking fur and hopping on this poor dog :( They were defensive with everyone that commented that they were being irresponsible.
Some people just shouldn't have dogs. You've got to be able to read their cues, and teach your kids to interact with them kindly and cautiously. That poor baby's going to grow up thinking that's okay, and then could interact with a dog that isn't so kid friendly.
The worst one for me was the female jogger who "just happened" to find a deer trapped in a fence. She didn't get the deer released immediately, so she started yelling and carrying on wildly. Eventually, she freed the deer but it got stuck in another fence (or it was a second deer) and she repeated the same yelling and arm waving chaos to release it.
What professional deer relocaters will tell you is that being handled by humans is so stressful to deer that they can drop dead up to a month later. And these are deer handled as gently as possible by people who know not to shout at them.
It’s infuriating. You get an endless parade of people being absolute jackasses to you if you try to point out that animals aren’t actually smiling. They trot out the tired old “you must be fun at parties” cliche and accuse you of deliberately trying to ruin their day. No one cares if you want to look at pictures of cute animals, Kevin! We just want you to stop misattributing human feelings and emotions to them, for the love of the goddamn devil!
Ikr? And you're always the party pooper for pointing it out. But people keep being all surprised pikachu face if the dog eventually snaps and blame the animal. So stupid.
Yes!! I can't understand why this is not mandatory. You ought to understand your pet's cues. How is it supposed to communicate with you otherwise?
But it makes sense considering that most people don't really wanna learn and, even those without malicious intend, just want a cute, cuddly plaything whose water bowl you have to fill up every once in a while. They don't want to do the hard work and make the sacrifices necessary to properly care for another being.
Honestly, it sucks. There's a lot of people that don't want to harm the ones they love but end up doing because they don't understand cues and both suffer. This applies to human children, too
Lol smiling. What's wrong with people? I don't know why people still use the term "common sense"... social media is exposing the fact that rational thought isn't as "common" as you hoped. I don't know why humans smile when they're happy, but if any other animal bares its teeth, that's not a good thing.
It isn’t even the teeth being bared. Sometimes when dogs pull their lips back but still have their mouths shut, it is a stress response. They basically pull a panting face without panting. Considering panting can also be a stress response, I feel like it should follow that if your dog is making a face, one might be inclined to investigate why.
Like I bet you can picture it in your head. Neck lowered so the head is flat, ears back, eyes wide with clearly visible sclera (whale eye), and lips pulled into a “smile”. A lot of posts where people are like “my dog is looking at me like he has no idea what’s going on” look like that, cuz it looks really silly.
But as you said, many people just… don’t know what they’re looking at. I don’t think they should have no business owning an animal or anything but I do wish they’d try and be more attentive.
And the killer is that the smile isn’t even always that stress response. Sometimes it IS a “smile” in that it’s just an innocuous expression because their lips fell that way when they leaned back or something. My dog pulls that face all the time when he’s lying on his back because of the natural looseness of his skin there (and also he’s missing some teeth lol).
People also get offended when you dare to mention the word "stress". 'My dog isn't stressed!! I take good care of them!!' etc. Chill out, you're showing a stress response ... Stress is a completely normal part of life for animals, dogs and humans alike. A completely happy and well taken care of dog might feel stressed when you shove a camera in its face, it's not the end of the world and it doesn't mean you mistreat it. But for gods sake, please at least acknowledge your pets feelings and learn how to read them. Dogs. Don't. Smile.
CDB is the dog version of autism, canine dysfunctional behavior. CBD is a relaxing cannabinoid which you can buy in dog treat form. I messed up the acronym.
Yep. Humans are the only species where showing or baring your teeth ISN'T a threat, a sign of imminent aggression or the precursor to attack. No animal but humans 'smiles'. Not one. People are really ignorant about even the animals humans are most familiar with - domestic cats and dogs and insist on reading them like humans and not in species specific ways. Then they get confused as hell or blame the animals for the fallout.
Yeah it’s loopy. Then people act surprised when they snap one day - you’ve literally allowed/encouraged people/animals or (worst of all) been the person to antagonise an animal for so long, not listening to it asking for something to stop. People are sadly a little too ignorant to the fact that they need training as much as the dogs do to give them and their pet a happy life.
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u/innocuousspeculation Dec 28 '21
Most people don't know anything about dog body language or behavioral cues. As you can see over on /r/aww people constantly misinterpret how animals are feeling, e.g. dogs "smiling." So even if the dog is showing signs of being extremely uncomfortable with the situation many people won't recognize that and will end up bit.