Levine told us that, no, tail wagging doesn’t necessarily mean a dog is happy.
“We have to look at more than the actual wag. You have to look at the rest of the dog’s body — you can’t just look at one body part to tell what they’re feeling because there are dogs who will, quote, ‘happily aggress.’”
She added that different wags might signal different things.
“If it’s fast and loose versus stiff and rhythmical, the direction it goes more toward — all of that can be varied emotions,” she said.
That’s because a wagging tail simply means the dog is aroused in some way. In order to determine if that arousal is positive or negative, Levine advised we look at the dog’s overall body language and the context in which we’re observing it.
“I usually just tell people if you want to guarantee this means the dog is happy, their whole butt is going back and forth, side to side. That — they’re happy.”
She also suggested we look for “the happy face.”
“They sort of have their mouth halfway open with their tongue hanging out… and they just have loose body language.”
What about dog kisses?
“Dogs can lick your face for different reasons,” Levine said. “Sometimes they’re just super excited to see you — it’s their greeting. I read and hear a lot of people say “kiss to dismiss’ — like [the dog] is just saying, ‘Please go away’ or ‘Don’t move further,’ but I don’t know that we know that. It’s a theory — I think more science has to be done on that, but licking can certainly be done as a positive thing, and I’m sure there are times when it can be not so positive. I think we have a lot to learn on that.”
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