Hi everyone. I’ve recently become concerned that a lot of the physical interactions I’ve had with our dog (we rescued him from an out of control breeding situation in a hoarder’s house 6 months ago) have been against his wishes. I recently stumbled across a bunch of videos on Instagram from trainer pages talking about body language and I don’t want to blindly believe them. We have been working with a trainer/behaviorist and we know our boy has separation anxiety that we’ve been working on for months now.
He very frequently will be sleeping somewhere and when we approach he will just lift one leg and not really lift his head to look at us, which is confusing because the guidance I’m seeing would indicate that his single leg lift is just appeasement, but not lifting his head means he’s comfortable. His body is usually relaxed, but he often yawns when I interact with him too and I thought I was able to tell the difference between a regular yawn and a stress yawn, but some of these videos show side by side comparisons and I can’t see a difference.
I’ve attached a couple videos that feel to me like they’re showing mixed signals and I’m terrified that I’m messing things up for him or making his life stressful and bothering him when I shouldn’t. I just want him to have the best life with us and be well behaved after the terrible year and a half he had when he was born. Can you help me understand how to read him? Or have any authoritative resources that make this extremely clear?
Videos: https://imgur.com/a/ulj0DSb
submitted by /u/t-burns14
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