The Psychology of dogs

by Janae Rodriguez

Have you ever wondered what your pet was thinking in certain situations? When your dog is looking into your soul as if they have something to say, and all you can do is wonder. But maybe, animals have their own way of communicating to us what they need.

Elijah Garcia has been a dog trainer for three years and works at Proper Pup.

“Dogs communicate with each other all pretty much mostly non verbally. So they pick up on micro expression, Garcia said. “They pick up on those split second facial details. Not only in other dogs, but in humans as well. And there’s even been studies done where they, they put a dog in an MRI machine. And they show him different pictures. And they compare that to the way that human perceives it. And they found that dogs brains are actually much more active when shown different facial expressions when compared to humans. So they do actually receive a lot more email emotions in our face a lot more body language from us, then we proceed from them.”

Julie Bond has been an animal behaviorist for 29 years. She went to UC Davis, where she majored in psychology with an emphasis in animals. An animal behaviorist observes an animal’s actions. For example, your dog bites someone. You go to the veterinarian, and the veterinarian would send you to an animal behaviorist to evaluate the behavior, so that the animal could get proper treatment.

Without speaking a single word, your dog can be very persuasive.

“They’re much better at reading us than we are reading them,” said Bond. “Which is why, for me, I love teaching body language seminars for people because I think the more people that get educated about how to read those signals that their dog is giving them how much relief their dog might feel, knowing hey, you know, keep gets me now”

Just like people, many of the actions that animals have are related to their experiences in the world. Also like humans, many animal behaviors may be rooted in anxiety.

“So none of us are anxious just because something just happened immediately. It’s usually that’s something that happened immediately combined with our previous experience,” said Bond.”And for a lot of animals just like people are genetics as well. So for me, I like to take a really good history of the animal as much as the, the humans may have for that animal meaning if they got the animal through rescue or the shelter, they may not know very much, but if they got the animal from a breeder, they should know a significant amount about you know, the parentage and the behaviors of those other dogs that came to play in their own dogs. We look at you know, for dogs in particular, you look at their socialization history because socialized dogs tend to Have more anxiety than well socialized dogs.”

Theophainia Brassard has been working a dog trainer for 13 years and is currently working at The Refined K-9, which specializes in behavioral modification.

“My job is to kind of come in and see why the animal might be having behavioral problems are acting out and then teach them ultimately how their behavior actually can change their dogs,” Brassard said. “So helping them realize what their role and their dogs relationship is how that might benefit from some change sometimes and just really talk to them about why and house I’m not just making them do it.”

Over the years she has seen a lot of success stories, but one that sticks with her is a German Shepard that was bred to be a working dog. So by nature, his temper was that of a guard dog. He was bounced around from a few homes until he was adopted by a family. The family quickly noticed his aggressive behavior around the house.

“I guess I love talking about this case, because when I talked to the owners, they had scheduled a time to put him down,” Brassard said. “Because Davis, UC Davis had said his temperament could not be fixed and they should put him down the behavior is there. The same with the behaviors of the ASPCA. […]We work we see the the owners every week. That’s This has been about almost two years now. So back in society, he’s back at home, he’s safe and he’s got a loving family.”