Human-dog communication: How body language and non-verbal cues are key to clarity in dog directed play, petting and hugging behaviour by humans

Clarity of communication between humans, intended to convey a message, may be misunderstood, or ambiguous, depending on many influencing variables, including impaired vision/hearing, neuro-divergence, culture, native language accent and gestures. Intraspecific communication in animals has been problematic to define in absolute terms, however, species such as dogs have a robustly researched and documented repertoire of behavioural body language, signalling and vocalizations. Humans tend to exhibit human communicative gestures of affection to their dogs, including hugging, touching, kissing and restraining them. Play is an essential element of the ontogenesis of any puppy/dog; however, it appears that intra and interspecies play in dogs differs in form, function and motivation. This study investigated, compared, and considered, the behaviours/communication which humans exhibit towards their dogs, and those exhibited by dogs towards their humans, during “play, petting and hugging behaviours”. Video-sharing platforms facilitate studying human-dog hugging, petting, and playing behaviour and comparing dogs’ non-verbal communication with the comments “like/dislike clicks” of viewers. The current study was conducted on google, investigating media sharing platforms. Study (1) “play” reviewed the 30 most popular videos, and studies (2) “hugging” and (3) “petting”, reviewed the 80 most popular videos on media platforms. Our results showed that many human behaviours may be concerning as humans tend not to necessarily understand the body language or vocalizations shown by dogs, when interacting with them. A high number of stress behaviours were observed in the dogs involved which may have occurred due to misunderstanding of the information a dog is communicating during human-dog play, petting and hugging behaviour. This can cause feelings of discomfort, anxiety, fear, distress, and confusion in a dog, which may result in a fractured human/dog bond, welfare issues for the dog, and the possibility of a dog escalating to exhibit defensive/agonistic behaviour should communication fail. The high prevalence of videos in which stress-related behaviours were identified was concerning, although the expression of a specific behaviour may sometimes depend on the kind of interaction and/or other characteristics of the dyad engaging in it. We advocate for increased education for both adults and children in canine communication, context and in co-operative ways of respecting agency in human-dog interactions.