The Body Language Of Dogs

Dog Club presentations

The Marmora Cup Dog Club has started an exciting series of interesting and informative seminars on dog related topics. These events are open to all dog lovers as well as club members.

The first of these seminars was held on Friday, October 27th at 7:00 p.m. in the William Shannon Room at the Marmora Public Library.  The title was “The Body Language of Dogs” and the presenter Gabriella Hamley.  The audience was introduced to two books on this subject: How To Speak Dog by Dr. Stanley Coren (The Free Press, 2000) and On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals by Turid Rugaas (Hanalei Training Center 1997). The talk was followed by viewing the video by Turid Rugaas: Calming Signals: What Your Dog Tells You.  Both the book and the video by Turid Rugaas are available from www.dogwise.com 

The important message of the presentation was that dogs have a series of body signals which they use with other dogs and humans to express goodwill or discomfort, in order to prevent conflict and to calm themselves and each other. People learned how, by correctly interpreting these signals we can understand our dogs better, and how we can use the signals ourselves to make the dogs understand us.
 
The presentation was well received by the audience and there was an interesting discussion about putting some of the newly learned information into practical use by the members.