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Teach Your Dog to Tolerate Hugs
Our furry family members love to learn, especially when a reward is involved, so it’s possible to use positive reinforcement to teach them that hugs are good and not a threat. Teaching a dog to tolerate hugs can be beneficial in situations when you may need to hold them still, like during a visit to the vet or groomer. Also, if you have small children around your home, it can be helpful to get your dog used to having arms around them.
Here’s what you can do to teach your dog that hugs aren’t so bad after all:
Eventually, the cycle of embracing and treat giving should help your dog associate hugs with something positive.
It’s important to remember that some dogs may really like hugs from their human family, but not from new acquaintances. It’s the same way we like close physical contact from friends or family, but we might feel awkward or freaked out if a stranger gets too close to us. Watch out for warning signs that your dog is uneasy around strangers to prevent any mishaps.
Although we humans communicate differently than our canines, we are still very similar in a lot of ways. It’s amazing how close and compatible our two different species have grown to be. Understanding what our dogs are really saying and listening to them can help us grow even closer.
Check out these additional tips for reading your pet’s body language!
The claim – under the headline “Dont Hug the Dog!” – comes from an expert: Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology and author of over a dozen books on dog behavior. So you might expect solid science to back-up his statement. Thats not the case.
Heres what Coren did… after searching Google s and Flickr using the terms hug dog and love dog, he downloaded a random sample of 250 pictures that clearly showed a person hugging a pooch. His team of researchers then examined those photos for signs of stress in response to physical contact – not obvious expressions like baring teeth, but more subtle facial expressions like lowering ears and turning the head to avoid eye contact (away from whatevers annoying or worrying the animal).
The idea that dogs are “designed” for running is rubbish, ignoring the 32,000-year history of canine domestication. Wolves (and perhaps wolf-like sled dogs, such as huskies) may well be “cursorial animals”, but todays domestic dogs have been changed by selective breeding. Modern breeds are whatever humans want, from huge working dogs like the St Bernard to toy dogs like Tinkerbell, the tiny chihuahua that would fit inside Paris Hiltons handbag.
Do our canine companions hate hugging? According to an article in Psychology Today, “New data shows that hugging your dog raises its stress and anxiety levels.”
Until then, we should treat the suggestion that mans best friend hates hugging like any other shaggy dog story.
Ask A Professional Dog Trainer: Should You Hug Your Dog? Do Dogs Like Being Hugged?
Do our canine companions hate hugging? According to an article in Psychology Today, “New data shows that hugging your dog raises its stress and anxiety levels.”
The claim – under the headline “Dont Hug the Dog!” – comes from an expert: Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology and author of over a dozen books on dog behavior. So you might expect solid science to back-up his statement. Thats not the case.
Heres what Coren did… after searching Google s and Flickr using the terms hug dog and love dog, he downloaded a random sample of 250 pictures that clearly showed a person hugging a pooch. His team of researchers then examined those photos for signs of stress in response to physical contact – not obvious expressions like baring teeth, but more subtle facial expressions like lowering ears and turning the head to avoid eye contact (away from whatevers annoying or worrying the animal).
Corens team then put each dog into one of three groups, scoring them based on whether they were showing: 1) at least one sign of discomfort, stress or anxiety; 2) a neutral or ambitious response; or 3) a comfortable and relaxed appearance. Results were: 81.6% of dogs showed signs of discomfort; 10.8% neutral; 7.6% were comfortable with contact. This suggests 4 out of 5 dogs hate hugs.
Based on Corens data, at least some animals (1-in-5) dont mind physical contact. And many dog owners would offer anecdotal evidence that their pets react to hugging the same way they do to other forms of affection. That said, it wouldnt detract from the claim that its generally true that dogs dont like hugs.
But that conclusion is too hasty. Picking which photos should be included in the dataset is a subjective process, for instance, so the pics might not represent a truly random sample. As Coren himself points out, theres also pre-selection because people upload s showing they care about animals, which assumes that both human and dog look happy (this illustrates that many of us arent able to properly recognize doggy stress signals).
Its also possible that dogs – like many humans – dont like having their picture taken. Online photos may not reflect an animals natural response to hugging – only non-photographic controls would demonstrate whether thats true. As Coren admits, “hugging is not something that dogs like [but] the scientific literature produced very little experimental evidence to support that belief.”
Corens article in Psychology Today doesnt mention whether his study is being published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. And because he hasnt provided details on his methodology, plenty of unanswered questions remain. Did his team limit itself to looking at stress signals, for example, or did it (rightly) check all facial expressions? The article doesnt describe a statistical test either, so how do we know the results are significant?
Overall then, the methods that produced the data are weak, so you cant draw any strong conclusions from its results. Note that does not mean Corens hypothesis – hugging your dog raises its stress levels – is wrong, only that the idea hasnt been proven correct by studying 250 photos from the internet.
If you know evolutionary biology, some sentences in the article also set-off alarm bells from after-the-fact explanations – Just-So stories. Most notably, as Coren states: “Dogs are technically cursorial animals, which is a term that indicates that they are designed for swift running.”
The idea that dogs are “designed” for running is rubbish, ignoring the 32,000-year history of canine domestication. Wolves (and perhaps wolf-like sled dogs, such as huskies) may well be “cursorial animals”, but todays domestic dogs have been changed by selective breeding. Modern breeds are whatever humans want, from huge working dogs like the St Bernard to toy dogs like Tinkerbell, the tiny chihuahua that would fit inside Paris Hiltons handbag.
So what about “Dont Hug The Dog”? While its certainly possible that hugging does indeed raise stress levels, you cant conclude that before Corens evidence has been reviewed by other scientists.
Until then, we should treat the suggestion that mans best friend hates hugging like any other shaggy dog story.