Blog — Canine Body Language

    Dogs don’t act out of spite or mischief—what looks like “bad behavior” is often a window into their nervous system at work. To truly understand why dogs react the way they do, we need to step back and see their brains not as moral arbiters, but as evolutionary survival machines, finely tuned to sense threat, reward, and opportunity. The Limbic Orchestra: Emotions in Motion At the core of your dog’s emotional life is the limbic system—a network of brain regions that regulates fear, motivation, pleasure, and memory. Amygdala: The emotional alarm bell. Detects danger and triggers rapid defensive responses....

What is Neuroception? Neuroception is a term coined by Dr. Stephen Porges as part of his Polyvagal Theory, referring to the subconscious, automatic process of scanning the environment for cues of safety or danger. It is a "built-in radar" that operates below the level of conscious thought, allowing a dog's nervous system to detect threats and initiate survival behaviors (fight, flight, or freeze) long before they consciously perceive a danger. As dog owners, understanding neuroception is crucial because it helps us realize that a dog's "bad" behavior is often actually a fear-based, involuntary survival response rather than disobedience or defiance....

  Balance and Proprioception are Deeply Intertwined Proprioception (your body's sense of position) provides the raw data (where you are) that your balance system uses (with input from eyes and inner ears) to make constant, tiny adjustments via your muscles to keep you steady and upright, preventing falls and allowing coordinated movement, with balance training effectively enhancing this internal GPS system. Essentially, better balance means better proprioception because the challenges of balancing force your proprioceptors to work harder and smarter, improving nerve signals and muscle response. Proprioception (body position in space) and interoception (internal body states like hunger, fatigue) are...

  The number one goal of any “behavior modification” plan I write for a dog is to create autonomic flexibility.  For a dog who has experienced a specific trauma, or one who has lived in chronic stress for long periods of time (like at a shelter) their nervous system may be somewhat “stuck” in sympathetic arousal. Or, depending on their temperament and how they deal with stress, they could potentially spend weeks or even months in a state of shut-down (appearing aloof, depressed, dissociated). They might even flip-flop between these two states, going from one extreme to another.  Humans often...

  I really wish I had some fancy training techniques for you. I wish I could impress you with some sharp obedience and lots of down-stays around chickens (impulse control). I wish making your dog "wait" for his dinner and then telling him "okay" was the quick and easy fix to all your training problems. But let's look on the bright side... What we do have is the built-in technology of the nervous system to detect threat and safety. What we have is the fascia, the living matrix of the body. We have neuroception, co-regulation, and somatic resonance. We have your...