Dog 'curving'

[Pinksparkie]

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The last few days our dog has started curving her body round to her eft as we wall through doors or next to her in the house, we started her at dog training this week which she found quite stressful so we thought maybe it's submissive? She's walking fine and running, eating, drinking etc except when she's doing the curving. She's basically bending her body round to the left side with her tail at 90 degree left as well and walking like that next to us. Does it more as we get home or go to walk from one room to another. Any ideas what this might be about?

 

[eingana]

Hmmm, I've never seen that as an expression of submission, but then I'm sure that there's a first time for everything.

Have you taken her to the vet to rule out pulled muscles and intermittent abdominal pain etc? Is the curving towards you (i.e. when she's on your right hand side) or away (when she's on your left?) or is it the same curve whichever side you're on?

 

[Pinksparkie]

It's normally to her left, so she'll wall. On my right a little in front looking back over her left shoulder towards her tail. I've got some pics but don't know how to put them up! The only reason we thought it's behavioural is the times she does it and when it started. So if we're walking to the kitchen to do her dinner or if she wants to go outside. Haven't taken her to the vet yet as am meeting the trainer later so if they're not sure either, we'll take her tomorrow. Thanks for the reply

☺

Obviously I meant walk, not wall!

 

[Pinksparkie]

They're not great piccies but the best I can do for now!

 

[Pinksparkie]

 

[eingana]

Ah, the yellow ribbon tells me a lot, as does her breed.

That looks like a partly formed urge to tail spin to me. Shepherds and border collies are particularly prone to tail chasing as an OCD type behaviour, with the more intelligent and more nervous ones developing it as a chronic behaviour as an expression of excitement or stress.

I think that you need to consult a behaviourist to work on the reasons why she is doing this and to learn some personalised strategies for pulling her out of this. It's also worth consulting your vet just to check her out and to see if the vet would like to try your dog on a low dose of a drug to relax her which may help her with breaking the behaviour along with the strategies. Some dogs end up on these drugs for life, but quite a lot have only a short course while the issues are being dealt with and then they're fine to come off them.

The sort of strategies which help with this are things like lots of ways to keep the dog focused on other things than their urge to tail spin, or when to back off completely and send her to her bed with a chew toy to calm down. Unfortunately it's not easy to work out which strategies are likely to work for which dog without seeing them first hand and trying out various things.

 

[goldenbear2013]

Hi there!

All of the above is sound advice, but I just wanted to let you know my lab does this, when we come home from work or walk towards him to give him a fuss.

Its my dogs way of saying scratch the base of his spin by his tail! thats it! and when we do he carries on spining with his head in the air cus he loves it! after that he stops.

and this is everytime we come into the same room as him. we call him a kidney bean cus he curves so much just to get his back scratched lol!

hopefully its nothing serious but getting your pooch checked out is the best thing to rule anything major out straight away.

all the best x