Dog Training, Performance & Art Dog training studio specializing in Dog Sports, Disc Dogs, and behavior modification.
03/12/2025
Canine Threat: Frontal Signals
CANINE THREAT: Frontal Signals
Learn to dream in Dog!
Recognizing threatening expressions is essential for all of us who deal with dogs in any way. Evaluating dogs in shelters can be dangerous. It’s important to be able to read subtle precursor signals that a dog gives before attacking.
I’ve condensed my years of photos of dogs in Bali into this video slideshow. And these photos of true threat are very rare for me to capture, because dogs in Bali do not seriously threaten very often. These photos of true social threat look very different from fearful alarm barking. Most of these dogs are not very fearful. They have chosen to challenge me directly.
Dogs mostly alarm-bark to recruit help from owners or housemate dogs to deal with territorial intrusion by a strange or strange dog. Alarm barking is based in fear, although it can also function as a threat to drive away strangers.
You can benefit from my years of observation, and watch this series of photos that show many instances of the exact same behavior.
Recognizing threat signals in a strange dog can keep us safe at a distance. These signals evolved to be very visible to other dogs, and we can learn to notice them. That gives us time to adjust our behavior while the dog is also deciding how to react. Whatever strategy we choose to employ, we will be acting before we accidentally get into serious trouble.
Of course, there is no substitute to real-life learning by observing dogs. My intention is to jumpstart our awareness, so that we can be more aware when a signal happens. I hope that my videos can combine with real life for very rapid learning, as well as education in bite prevention for beginning trainers and pet owner families.
When training or out with our Service Dogs, our observations can help us to read approaching dogs. Intervening early to protect our dogs is essential.
HOW TO WATCH THIS VIDEO:
It’s easy! Just watch it over and over.
Natural Learning mimics the way we learn language by immersion, whether as infants or adults. The slides are designed to speed up our learning.
This video uses Natural Learning techniques to trigger our brains to recognize behavior signals. This allows our brains to recognize and imprint the common features of a fearful expression.
Once we can recognize the signals, our brains filter out the irrelevant. This happens because we are seeing the exact same signal in many different “packages” of dog head shape, color and coat. These all are irrelevant distractions.
In the same way, when learning a new word, the brain learns to hear that word distinctly within a stream of irrelevant voice sounds.
I’m in the process of making 30 videos like this, each teaching us a different behavior.
Please feel free to share.
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CANINE THREAT: Frontal SignalsLearn to dream in Dog!Recognizing threatening expressions is essential for all of us who deal with dogs in any way. Evaluating ...
