My dog yawning a great deal...?

Is it true that if a dog is yawning a lot it means he is anxious/stressed...?

I just read this on another website and am wondering if it's true, as my Lab has recently started yawning a great deal

We don't think it's fatigue; he gets a good amount of exercise but nothing excessive.

My other half suggested it could be happening because the central heating is so high at the moment??

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

It's also a calming signal, perhaps if you're stressing about something, your dog's telling you to calm down

TARIMOOR -


Would you be kind enough to give a tiny bit more detail if you have time?

When you say it's a 'calming' signal, do you mean the dog is trying to calm himself - or those around him (i.e. as you mention, me?)

If excessive yawning can be the result of both tension and relaxation, are there any other ways to tell which of these my dog's yawning is the result of?

Cheers

that is incredibly interesting tarimoor and i just started a thread about signals in the hope that you and others could expand upon the theory

A bit of both as I understand it. Humans also sometimes yawn to release tension though we aren't always aware of it. You know, like when sometimes when you yawn, it sets others off yawning too?

It may be a calming signal, he may just be yawning, it depends what is happening when the dog does it, it can often present with other calming signals.
Turid Rugaas wrote a book about the calming signals that dogs display, it is short and straightforward and a book, that IMO EVERY dog owner should read before getting a dog.
This is a link to an article about calming signals that she wrote.
http://www.canis.no/rugaas/onearticle.php?artid=1

that's interesting..

Our female yawns in certain situations, she's quite an anxious dog so we presumed it was anxiety.

I know you can pass yawns onto dogs and vise versa - like humans, I do it all the time to ours!

Oh I'm always catching the yawns from Dougal! He doesn't yawn too often but when he does he sets us all off

If you've ever got stressed when trying to train your dog something, you may well catch them yawning at you. Tau used to do it to me at training classes, which is where I learnt that it can be a calming signal; now if she does it, I just catch myself and chuckle, I'd rather enjoy our training than turn it into a stressful session, so I just take a step back and do things a bit differently.

That's just one situation, dogs yawn just the same way we do when they're tired.

Also not all stress is necessarily 'bad stress'.... it's all quite complicated really