09/02/2025
DOG TALK TUESDAY: Pacing
Pacing - where a dog is walking or trotting back and forth, either in a repeated pattern or in various unpredictable patterns, is sign of stress especially when accompanied by a lowered head, ears back, tail down, stress panting, eye whites, dilated pupils, etc. While some dogs can pace in anticipation of something potentially good, even in those situations there’s some stress involved with the frustration of not “getting the thing” that they want, yet. The dog videoed here is actually still fearful of certain members of the household, even after a year of adoption.
Dogs can pace when they are uncomfortable or fearful and don’t know what to do instead. They don’t feel safe and they don’t feel comfortable staying still. Pacing is a behavior that can often times make anxiety and stress worse, as it can create a snowball effect when allowed to continue for long periods of time without an intervention.
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.
