10/22/2024
DOG TALK TUESDAY: MUZZLE PUNCHING
Muzzle punching is when a dog makes contact with their closed mouth, in a “jabbing,” “poking,” or “punching” manner. This can be considered an escalated distance increasing signal, possibly one of the last “warnings” before an actual bite.
This is a video of my own dog, Chupacabra, that I used recently in my presentation at a conference. In the video, there’s a muzzle on the floor with some residual smearable food in it (peanut butter) which can turn the muzzle into a food item from the view point of the dog. Chupacabra has a history of multiple bites involving resource guarding (including food items). So when I reach down to pick up the muzzle, you will see that he body blocks once, body blocks twice, and then escalates to a muzzle punch to my hand, as it continued to reach for the muzzle (done purposely for the intention of this video - do not try at home! I know Chu well, his body language, and his thresholds). It’s at that moment that I ask him to leave it and move away, rather than reach for it another time.
The muzzle punch was a clear indicator to move away and make space from the object that he was guarding.
As always, when reading body language we have to remember to read it like we would read a sentence. Understand that it’s all the words together that create the meaning of a sentence, not one word alone. Thereby we also need to take all of the dog’s body language signals combined to create a meaning, and not focus on one single body part by itself.