dog rituals through Sleepy Eyes

Dog Rituals Through Sleepy Eyes
5 a.m and I’m sitting on the beach in Salema, Portugal.
I didn’t even know there was a 5 in the a.m until this morning.
To be honest, and excuse my ignorance here, but I wasn’t even aware that Portuguese blackbirds tap danced on the roofs of villas at daybreak but guess what, they do.

What I’ve lost in sleep however I’ve certainly gained in dog observation.

When I arrived here this morning I saw a lone ‘beach’ dog, about the size of a Labrador, sat looking out to sea as though Reginald Perrin owed it some money. Twenty minutes or so later a second beach dog the size of a Jack Russell terrorist appeared on the scene about a hundred yards down the coast along the waterline. The two clocked each other and the ritual began; now this is real doggy dancing.

They stood still, facing each other, every part of their bodies in line with their heads, a typical body position for a dog that has either:-

a) just spotted an ‘intruder’ on it’s territory or;
b) just been spotted wandering onto another dog’s territory

Us primates are not so different, imagine you pull back your living room curtain and someone’s trampling all over your front lawn. You open your front door, what’s your body position? That’s right, square on to the perpetrator, head held upright and in line with a straight spine. Who does this stranger think they are?! Everything about you is parallel. Your eyes are straight forward and you WILL NOT blink.
Now reverse the roles, imagine that you’re the person on the lawn, you didn’t realise it was someone else’s lawn, you thought it was public land, you didn’t even know that anyone else was watching. You hear a door quickly open, someone shouts “Oi!”, everything about you orientates towards this potential danger until you decide your next move. You mirror each other.

Back to the beach. The larger dog started its territorial barking, you know, that low, machine gun barking that reminds me of my first van trying to start at stupid o’clock on a January morning. As soon as the barking started the smaller dog dropped his head, turned his body, blinked and yawned; beautiful.


The guy at the door shouts “What do think you’re doing mate? You’re on MY garden!”
As soon as you realise your mistake you drop your shoulders, you divert your eyes for a second from ‘the aggressor’ and as you look back towards him you blink, your body turns sideways and you bend one knee.

The guy at the door calms down.




On the beach the two dancers then started to approach each other, slowly and in perfect arches until they met, their footsteps painting a huge ‘S’ in the sand with our two feral friends stood in the middle.
Remember the last time you were at a formal party, or perhaps introduced to someone at an interview? How did you approach to greet each other? It’s subtle but I bet it was in a curve, especially if you shook hands. (Shaking hands; “Why does my pet human insist on shaking other human’s hands? Another one of those weird monkey ceremonies I guess.”)

By the way, you don’t have to take any of this as gospel, test it for yourselves. The next time you’re introduced to the Regional Manager visiting your office, fix everything about your body upright and square , look directly at your boss, smile, don’t blink and walk directly at him to shake his hand. If, by the time you’ve made your approach he’s still there, he will think:-
a) His proposal to make the office more automated has been embraced wholeheartedly and that you are, in actual fact, a robot, or;
b) You ARE mad, and you WILL kill him.
As in all polite society, the pair of beach dogs checked out each other’s rears before checking out the face; No? Just me then. The duo sniffed around for a while, copying each other’s actions with a poetic, empathic ease before settling down to look out to sea again. What was out there?

After 10 minutes or so of this perfect harmony, Mrs Ex-Pat with her Boxer pulled into the harbour car park. Just falling just short of playing the trombone to announce their arrival, out she got, baseball cap, bum bag, tennis ball and metre long plastic ball chucker thingy, ( as long as I have dog hairs on my couch, I’ll never understand the metre long plastic ball chucker thingy.)
Onto the water’s edge they marched, no gentle arcs in the sand for these two, life’s too short. Now I’m not anthropomorphic but I swear, when Boxer started spinning in anticipation of the ball, the two beach dogs looked at each other in total bemusement of this outsider, as far as they were concerned, you may as well have put a camera around his neck, dressed him in checked shorts and called him Brad.

Up and down the seafront our Boxer thundered, chasing the ball, reloading Ex-Pat, chasing the ball, reloading, chasing, reloading, you get the picture. The only movement of our beach dogs as they sat shoulder to shoulder, was the motion of their heads, left to right, left to right as our Boxer single-mindedly created more foam in his mouth than the Atlantic sea could muster in its waves.
30 love. Ex-Pat to serve.
The beach dogs sent out for strawberries and cream.

Having been treated this morning to a live outdoor display of one of the most beautiful ballets I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a few, us Essex Boys love a cracking good ballet), a new question has arisen which I’m left to ponder:-
What I find interesting is that the two feral dogs that must rely on their chase instinct on some occasions in order to survive, have no interest in chasing the ball, whereas the pet Boxer couldn’t get enough of it. Try playing fetch with your dog in the local park in front of two random pet dogs and see how far you get!
Is it because the hunting drive of our beach dogs is satisfied on a daily basis, therefore it’s not a particular itch of theirs that needs scratching? Does Neil Armstrong play Space Invaders? Who knows?
Such is the quandary of a Dog Trainer, ask yourself one question about dog behaviour and a new one is bound to surface.

Next month I’ll be exploring the world of a dog’s Drives; What are they? How do they work for the dog and if possible, how can they work for us?
In the meantime, Boxer’s gone home and the two ‘locals’ have gone back to looking out over the ocean.
Now I see it, a fishing boat has appeared on the horizon and as it draws closer to the shore our dogs get more animated, I guess they’re having fish for breakfast and I must head off back home for mine.
Blackbird pie.
Steve Mann
alphadogtrainingschool

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