The Dog Who Licked Too Much

A client called me on Monday regarding her dog.  We'd worked together a few years ago to help her resident cat acclimate to the arrival of this new dog.  Apparently, her college-aged kids are all home for the summer now and two brought home roommates who couldn't return home due to travel restrictions.  The household dynamic previously was just my client, her husband, and their high school aged daughter.  Over the weekend, the college kids were all sitting on the couch playing some sort of game on the TV.  There were a lot of loud voices and excitement!  The dog had been running around the house yipping and barking, jumping up on people and mouthing, something he'd not done since he was a puppy.  They chalked it up to all the excitement and added people in the house.  When he jumped up on the couch, however, he ran across laps and began to aggressively (her word) lick faces.  The kids were swatting him away trying to get him to stop licking and get off of the couch where he was trampling them and ruining their game.  This is when everything changed.  The dog stopped licking and started to growl. Everyone froze and they weren't sure what to do.  My client diffused the situation by clapping her hands and saying "Cookie time!" to which the dog responded by hopping off the couch and racing for the kitchen.  She was calling me because she wanted to better understand how the dog could go from "happily licking all the kids" to growling at them.  I told her the simple answer is because he wasn't actually happy.  Let's look at this a bit closer.

Licking is one of those behaviors that dog do.  They lick themselves, they lick each other, and they lick us.  Some people love it, others hate it; no one really seems to be ambivalent about being licked by a dog!  Dogs lick to appease (release tension) and attempt to self-calm.  Anxious dogs may even compulsively lick themselves or objects in their environment.  I even know a dog who licks his owner's hands while she is clipping his nails!  As with the dog who moved from licking faces to growling, the dog licking hands while his nails are being cut are both very anxious and showing their discomfort.  Neither dog wants to escalate to a bite, but they are trying to tell the humans that they are very uncomfortable, anxious, and stressed out.  Frantic or compulsive licking must be recognized as anxiety and treated accordingly.

My client's dog should have been redirected at the first sign of agitation, when he was racing around the house barking, jumping and mouthing.  He could have been taken for a walk, redirected to a toy or bone, or simply put in his crate (his safe haven) to relax away from all the excitement.  Just as I instructed my client whose dog licks her hands while she is doing his nails...the energy and anxiety fueling that displacement behavior needs to be redirected appropriately to reduce the dog's overall tension.

I'm really glad my client didn't punish the growl as that growl was the only way, short of a bite, that the dog could tell them how he really felt.  The growl was information that the humans could act on.  Now they know that when all the young adults are gaming in the family room, the dog needs to be elsewhere, happily removed from that energy level that causes him stress. Rather than seeing all that bouncing, mouthing, and licking as affection, my client will now recognize that those are signs of agitation, ambivalence, and stress and act accordingly.  Good news for her family and great news for her dog.

As always, if you have questions about your pet's behavior, you know where to find me.

When Ozzie is anxious he will often seek out my attention and lay with some part of his body touching mine. If I acknowledge him too much when he's doing this, however, he will begin to obsessively lick my hands or feet, or his own feet.  I've learned to simply pet him once gently and then look away.  When I do that, he relaxes faster, self soothes, and more quickly bounces back to his usual, happy self.