Most of us have experienced what it’s like when a dog grabs treats like a shark. We probably know some situations where our dogs do that and what it might mean. But what if a dog receives too gently?
I’ve been writing about dog body language since I started this blog. I recently realized that getting treatment is all down to body language. Sometimes we feel it more than we see it, but behavior can still give us a clue to a dog’s emotional state.
I haven’t seen this discussed much. Often I see the binary question: Will the dog take the food or not? This is followed by a conclusion about whether the dog is “over the threshold.” But there is a whole spectrum of nuance that is lost if we limit ourselves to a yes or no answer. I questioned the binary model years ago and discussed it in this post. Now I’m going one step further.
If a dog suddenly takes food, or suddenly takes it cautiously, we need to pay attention! And the latter is harder to notice, because we’re more likely to ignore it when treat-taking doesn’t hurt us.
Soft Mouth and Hard Mouth Can Be Universal Labels
First, some discussion of terminology. Some people will say that their dog has a “soft mouth” or a “hard mouth” in general. A soft mouth is desirable in working retrievers because the dog’s gentle picking and loading leaves the bird intact. A stiff mouth is undesirable in most situations. I asked a sports-biting friend about this, because I thought it might be a point of discussion there. They said their colleagues were more likely to say a dog had a “tight grip” on the bite sleeve than a tight mouth (and a tight grip is a good thing).
So I’m not talking about these characteristics: how a dog carries something or how they bite on cue. I’m also not talking about how dogs bite people or animals in aggression incidents.
I’m talking about how dogs take food, how dogs take food from our hands. Also, I use the terms situationally, not as general labels. Because this attitude is different! The way a dog behaves can tell us a lot about what is going on with them at that moment.
Let’s Make the Terms
Here are the characteristics I associate with “tough mouth” and “soft mouth.”
Hard Mouth
- The dog’s teeth close on my fingers when he takes the treat enough that it’s uncomfortable. Ie, he bites me.
- The dog may jump or grab my hand as he closes his teeth hard. In this case there was not only uncomfortable pressure, but his teeth dragged my hand.
Soft Mouth
- The dog stopped at my hand and took the treat with his tongue or lips.
- The dog puts his mouth around my fingers, but I feel his teeth in a very small, glancing way.
I can use this information!
How Clara Treats
Clara is a “stress-upper.” When he gets excited and agitated, he does things harder, plain and simple. But also, faster movement can do it. The walking exercise that bound him was so painful when he was young because all it took was the motion of walking and he made the treatment even more difficult. I guess we can still classify that as arousal.
Also, he has a harder time if I give it to him faster. My mistake; it’s mostly because I’m trying to get treatment before he moves. (Yes, I know about that thing called a clicker, haha.) Pulling a hand back to protect the fingers can start a vicious cycle of the dog snapping to get the treat, and we of Clara had also gone down that road in the past. .
Finally, he is more bitey when I offer a high value treat, but that says more about the treat than his emotional state at the moment. That’s a common response for many dogs.
How Zani Takes Treats
Zani was the inspiration for this post. Because Zani, who is usually soft-spoken, is even more soft-spoken when annoyed. When he gets distracted by something, he prefers to check out rather than act.
So if we’re moving, say, on a walk, and he suddenly gets weak, I’ll check on him. He is usually nervous about something. Here’s the order of Zani’s treat-taking types, from an emotionally normal state to terrifying.
- Taking treatment normally; I could feel his teeth but only in passing.
- Taking treatment gently and carefully; using only his lips and tongue.
- Will not take treatment at my hand; usually on the back. But it will be picked up if I put it on the ground.
- Will not take treatment.
I find the third condition attractive. But it tracks Zani, who is sensitive to spatial and social pressure.
In the image above, Zani is taking a treat in his normal gentle manner. He wasn’t angry, as far as I know.
In the video embedded in this blog post, I show Zani refusing treats on a walk. I assessed that he was looking for other reinforcement. I still see that as true, but looking at the video, I also see some anxiety. Zani went through some tough times in her life when she was very anxious, so this may have been her baseline back then. It stands out to me now.
How Lewis Treats
Lewis is both stressful and stressful in his treat taking.
He can get sharky when he is aroused, and will take treatment more difficult when there is another dog nearby, because he is guard. But he does it more gently when there is concern and development like Zani’s.
His most interesting behavior, however, is not easy to classify. Sometimes when there is movement, he will put my whole hand in his mouth, but he doesn’t close his teeth properly. So comparing the picture above does not show that he is biting me (or about to bite me). He wrapped around a large part of my hand, but he didn’t bite too hard. You can see that in the video below. In some cases I hold out my hand flat, and in some I offer my fingers. He gobbles the hand every time (because I am cuing him to run around and he is excited), but it doesn’t hurt me.
He has good suppression play; his control over swallowing foods from my hand may be related to that.
Training for Friendly Treatment
There are ways to teach dogs to take food gently. One is to hold the food if you can feel the dog’s teeth, which loosen when they only use their lips and tongue. Another, which involves less extinction and negative punishment, is to teach the dog the difference between licking and biting, then putting “tongue” on cue. I have seen consistent people (ie, most trainers) succeed with these methods. There are also situational tricks like feeding the dog only through a barrier, such as crate wires. I suspect you’d have to do hundreds of iterations that way (and put the other treatment delivery on hiatus) to generalize the behavior to other situations.
For us civilians, trying to change a dog’s receptive behavior if we’ve been giving them food from our hands for a long time is actually defying the corresponding law. The way they drink is very easy to reinforce. This is the last behavior before they swallow the food. So if your pup has been eating shark-like foods for a few weeks and you’ve decided you want to change that, you may have an uphill battle. You will have to be consistent, which is difficult. In what situations do you give your dog treats? Plus, that consistency can put the dog into an extinction process—”Hey, it used to work to get me food!”—that can frustrate them.
Clara was grabby as a puppy, and I made some feeble efforts toward changing her treatment behavior. But I do a lot of classical conditioning, and getting him comfortable in his environment is more important than protecting my hands. Because if you “ban” the treat when trying to make a classical pairing, you risk weakening the pairing. Placing a food procurement contingency is a reasonable step in this process, but we can’t do that for very long.
There are many variables involved in how feasible and important it is to change a dog’s treat-taking. But if you teach your dog to take food gently, you can still get feedback on your dog’s emotional state from how they take the food, but probably in a more subtle way.
“Does the Dog eat?” vs. “How Does a Dog Get Food?”
The latter is a better question.
I’m not the first to discuss this. But the articles I found focused on sharky treat-taking. None of them mentioned that gentle treatment can also be a warning sign of stress or fear. Drinking carefully seems to be a natural precursor to not drinking them. Thanks, Zani, for teaching me that.
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