Tag Archives: head tilt

Are Dogs Like Babies?

Posted on by Pugminded

From CesarsWay.com. Cesar Milan is also the author of Cesar’s Way — The #1 New York Times Bestseller (Hardcover)

Are Dogs Like Babies More Than We Think?

By Joe Wilkes

A new study from Current Biology proves a lot about dogs that we’ve been noticing at CesarsWay.com for a long time. Researchers in Hungary completed a study that shows dogs respond to eye contact and verbal and nonverbal cues from humans similarly to human children in the two-year-old range who haven’t started talking. Some dogs are even able to understand American Sign Language, the hand signals used by the hearing impaired to communicate.

Dogs were shown to read nonverbal cues, especially when the human used eye contact and could sense the emotion of the human. ABC news reported Nicholas Dodman, the director of the Animal Behavior Center at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in N. Grafton, Massachusetts as saying “They are looking for an expression of what the person is thinking…This is another example of a supposed barrier between animals and humans being knocked down by research.”

The study, conducted by the Institute for Psychological Researches, Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest used actresses who addressed the dogs and turned their attention to a pot. One group of actresses made eye contact with the dog and the dogs’ eyes were tracked to follow the actresses’ eyes looking at the pot. The dogs who did not get eye contact from the actresses were less likely to look at the pot. Additionally, the study showed, the dogs were more responsive to high-pitched “baby talk” voices than lower normal conversational tones.

The study helps prove that dogs are more attuned with our energy, tone of voice, and other nonverbal behaviors than we might have imagined. Other studies have shown that dogs possess small vocabularies of words they hear their humans say repeatedly, but these scientific studies have helped quantitatively support the anecdotal evidence that pet owners have seen of dogs responding intuitively to their humans’ energy and nonverbal signs. The studies also underscore Cesar’s observances of dogs who are able to sense the energy that a human brings into a room, how they respond to touch, vocalizations, and eye contact, and how their behavior is affected. So for all of you out there who say your dog is like your baby, you may be more right than you thought!

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Meet the Pug

Posted on by Pugminded

Cute article from PugVillage.com

You’re walking your Pug down the street and you see someone approaching looking closely at your dog. Your dog is small, between 14 and 20 pounds, give or take a pound of two…It has a curly twisty sort of tail, protruding eyes, a muscular body, button ears, short legs and a solemn expression or a smile on its face, depending on the moment. The man stops you and asks “is that a miniature bulldog”? You break a smile and say “oh no, it’s a Pug”! The man wants to take a closer look and asks you if your dog bites. You pause for a moment, thinking ever so briefly at how funny that question sounds to you and say “Bite? My dog may lick you forehead to chin, he may even make a few strange sounds, but bite? Uh uh”. The man bends down to take a closer look at your little dog, and it’s curly tail wags slowly in a funny circular motion…Not back and forth, or up and down, or side to side…More like around and around. The man’s amused, noticing the Pugs facial folds and says to the dog “you’ve got wrinkles”. You watch and smile as your Pug gives this stranger a classic Pug head tilt at the sound of his voice and the man wonders if this dog actually understands him. He talks some more and sees the head tilt again and again, along with a variety of classic Pug expressions.

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“His ears and muzzle are like velvet” the man says, but “his coat is thick, does he shed?”. “Does he ever” you reply. “There’s hair all over the house, on the clothes and now that you’ve pet my Pug, you’ll have Pug hair in your house too. You might as well just get a Pug now.”

 The man hears the slight purring sound your Pug is making, or maybe it’s a snort, and asks if they make that noise all the time. You tell the man “all the time” is a relative term. You know your Pug snorts and snores while it, and you are sleeping. You know it makes these noises and others when you pet it, and when it gets excited. It cries a happy cry when you come home or say the word “walk” or “car”. That funny sound is enough to make anyone’s bad mood melt away. “I don’t know if I could live with the snoring at night” the man says. To which you reply, “I don’t know if I could sleep without that snoring”!

Being a Pug Person, you tell him a bit more about the breed. That it comes in Fawn or Black, but aside from color, a Pug’s a Pug. It’s a sedentary dog that likes to be around people almost as much as it likes to eat, but not quite. You talk about its good nature, that it is great with kids, gentle and passive. It sheds plenty, and that’s worth repeating for people with an aversion to vacuums or people with allergies. It plays with you when it feels like it, and sleeps long and comfortably on your lap or at your feet when it isn’t playing or eating. “Pugs don’t bark much either” you tell him, but they will do their level best to imitate a big dog in order to protect you and your home…”Pugs are funny that way” you say…”little dogs, that think they’re big”.

 You wouldn’t be a Pug Person if you didn’t take care to mention that Pugs have a bit of a stubborn steak to them. After all, it’s part of their charm…like the snoring. In short, you tell the man that Pugs are the best of dogs…Warm loving companions that own you, rather than you owning it. “Don’t let the solemn look fool you” you conclude, Pugs are The Clown Prince of Dogs, as entertaining and funny as any dog can be.
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