Do Dogs Dream?: Nearly Everything Your Dog Wants You to Know

A dog reserves tail wagging for things that are alive,

While some tail wags are associated with happiness, others can signal a variety of quite different things, including fear and insecurity, social challenge, or even the warning that if you continue your approach you’re apt to be bitten.

Therefore, it could be argued that the real reason canines roll in obnoxious-smelling organic manner is simply an expression of the same sense of aesthetics that causes human beings to wear overly loud and colorful Hawaiian shirts.

Classical conditioning of emotions provides one example of evidence suggesting that reward-based training procedures should work better and establish a stronger bond between dog and trainer than punishment-based systems can.

Dogs are different, since they are primarily carnivores and in the wild most of their food is meat. Because of the high sodium content in meat,

Since dominance seems to be more important to males, they have developed the habit of lifting a leg when they urinate so that they can aim their urine higher. In addition, the higher the marking is, the more difficult it is for other dogs to mark over it and obscure the message.

The real difference between good and great trainers is how precisely they time that learned reward. Good trainers must also be good observers; otherwise they might miss behaviors that should have been rewarded.

From about 3,000 to around 12,000 Hz, dogs can hear sounds that average between –5 and –15 dB, meaning that they are considerably more sensitive to these higher-frequency sounds than people are. Above 12,000 Hz, human hearing ability is so bad relative to that of dogs that it doesn’t make sense to compare them numerically.

The tail’s position, specifically the height that it is held, can be viewed as a sort of emotional meter.