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By Root 723 0

is not just held, it is wagged. Wagging does not translate as simple happiness. A high, stiffly wagging tail can be a threat, especially when accompanied by an erect posture. Quickly wagging a dropped, low tail is another sign of submission. This is the tail of the dog who has just been caught finishing off the last of your shoes. The vigor of the wag is roughly indicative of the intensity of the emotions. A neutral tail wagging lightly is interested but tentative. A loose, lively whisking tail accompanies the noseled search for a ball lost in high grasses or an odor trail discovered on the ground. The familiar happy wag is incredibly different from all of these: the tail is held above or out from the body and strongly draws rough arcs in the air behind it. Unmistakable delight. Even non-wagging is meaningful: dogs tend to still their tails when attending carefully to a ball in your hand or waiting for you to tell them what's happening next.

Researchers interested in the brain of the dog accidentally discovered something about the tail of the dog along the way: the dog wags asymmetrically. On average, dogs' wags tend more strongly to the right when they suddenly see their owners—or even anything else of some interest: another person, or a cat. When presented with an unfamiliar dog, dogs still wag—more that tentative wag than the happy wag—but tending to the left. You might not be able to see this in your own dog unless you watch them wag in slow-motion video playback (which I highly recommend)—or unless your dog is one of those who wag less back-and-forth than round-and-round, inclining to the side. Consider yourself lucky to be wagged at with such clear-cut enthusiasm.

Pump does a full-body shake: it starts in her head and rolls down her body, shimmering out through her tail. It is like a punctuation mark that has yet to be discovered. She shakes to end an episode, when she's unsure, and sometimes when she's just ambling along.

The dog uses his body expressively: communication writ through movement. Even the moments between interactions are marked by movement: as when a dog does a full-body shake, his skin twisting over his frame, to indicate his finishing one activity and moving on to another. Not all dogs have hackles that visibly raise with pique, long tails to ostentatiously wag, or ears that raise with interest. The fabulously ropy-furred komondor approaches other dogs with what we must assume is his head, but neither eyes nor ears are visible underneath his long locks. In breeding dogs to have particular looks that we find agreeable, we are limiting their possibilities for communicating. Just as we might expect, but would rather not confront, a dog with a docked tail has, thereby, a docked repertoire of things he can say.

Research looking at the range and rate of signals used by ten physically dissimilar breeds found just this. Comparing the behavior of dogs from the Cavalier King Charles spaniel to the French bulldog to the Siberian husky, there was a clear relationship between the breed appearance and the number of signals they used. Those animals that had been most changed physically in domestication from wolves—the King Charles, at the extreme—sent the fewest signals. These pedomorphic or neotenous dogs, who retain more features of juvenile members of canid species into adulthood, look least like adult wolves. The huskies, which have the most wolflike features and are genetically closer to Canis lupus, do the most wolflike signals.

Given that many bodily signals provide information about one's status, strength, or intent, the necessity for dogs to send these signals is presumably diminished in a world where humans chaperone dogs through life. But the same signals used to convince a dominant animal of benign intent may also be used to communicate information to humans. Walking through the city, I turn a blind corner and nearly step on an unfamiliar dog pulling on a long leash. Seeing me, she crouches, wags her tail furiously between her legs, and licks toward my face. It may have begun as a submissive