Hello, everyone. Welcome to Shape by Dogs. I'm Susan Garrett. And today, I'm

to talk about something that could very well save a dog's life. It could save a child or possibly even you from getting a very

serious injury from a dog. And what the topic is identifying what a dog is about to do based on all the cues they're giving you. This is an

acronym I believe I heard first from the late Sophia Yin and it is temp. You need to take a dog's

temp. T-E-M-P. Now, I stick an extra E in there. So, T-E-E-M-P, but let's still call it

temp because it makes such great sense. When you approach a dog, the dog has a lot of ways of communicating what his intention is, how he's feeling.

And the challenges as human beings, we sometimes misunderstand or misread these cues,

or sometimes these cues have been subdued so that the dog doesn't express them the

way he would like to. So, I'm going to go over what are all the signs that the dog may be

communicating to you and how you put them to all together at the end. All right. T-E-E-M-P, the tail. Obviously,

everyone says, oh, look, the dog's tail wagging, he's happy. Not necessarily. You've got to look at

how is that dog's tail wagging. Now, some dogs will wag their tail and it creates an entire body wag. That is a, you know, super happy dog.

Or it goes like a helicopter in a circular motion that a lot of dogs will show different levels of happiness based on how that tail is wagging.

Some dogs may hold their tail up along their belly. You know, you could say maybe they're cold, but a lot of times that is a sign

of anxiety, stress, lack of comfort with the situation. Or it could be held very stiffly,

maybe in a stiff way above their back,

that could be them getting a little bit more territorial. So, a wagging tail that's held low,

like between the hawks that's, that's wagging kind of frantically,

that's not necessarily a happy tail. That could be a nervous tail and that could lead to problems

if you don't interpret that correctly. So, a lazy wag back and forth with other signs is generally a pretty good sign that the dog is

confident and happy with the situation. Let's move on to the E, the first E, eyes and ears.

Okay, so the dog's eyes. If you can see if they're just full round eyes, bright,

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