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<p>I was talking to our trainer about this, because our dog’s tail is in almost constant motion. I said, “Gee look at how happy he is all the time.” And our trainer said that is a misconception. He said a number of years ago, studies were done to study dogs tail wagging patterns. Thousands of hours of video were studied very carefully and show that there are very subtle differences, barely visible to the naked eye (in fact, they have to slow down the video to pick up the differences), that indicate whether a dog is wagging his/her tail because of happiness or not. Researchers noted that dogs who were wagging because they are generally happy at the moment, had tails that trended toward the left side of a complete wag. But it’s such a small variance that it’s difficult to pick up with the human eye. Dogs who are wagging for other reasons (such as they’re excited because they’re about to attack someone/another dog, etc.) that aren’t considered so positive, generally wag, trending toward their right side. The general consensus is that, no one should ever consider a dog is happy, approachable, and/or well-behaved just because they’re wagging their tail. </p>
<p>Since he told me this, I’ve tried to watch my dog’s tail and see if I can notice these subtle differences and see if the coincide with the mood I think my dog is in (based on the behavior/action going on such as meal time, going to the vet, being around other dogs, having strangers approach him, etc.), and I think I see these differences in his wags. </p>
<p>I thought it was all very interesting, and I learned something good. Of course, if a strange dog approaches me, one that I’m not familiar with their wag, it would probably be more difficult for me to read the situation in an instant and know which he/she was doing.</p>