How people with different experience interpret canine body language?

Reading and correctly interpreting canine body language is essential not only for a good human –dog relationship but also to pre-empt undesirable behaviours or dangerous accidents (Bradshaw e Nott, 1995; Shepherd, 2004). Aim of this work was to investigate people ability of reading and interpret dogs body language. In particular 33 dog owners, 35 people who never had a dog, 31 vet students dog owners, 33 vets and 30 vets specialist in behaviour were asked to participate at this study. Volunteers were asked to watch 12 different videos of dog-dog and human-dog interactions and fill in a multiple choice questionnaire after each clip, choose between 9 descriptors which, in their opinion, best described dogs behaviour. Behavioural categories were neutral, friendly, aggressive, ambivalent, fearful, submissive, playful and not normal. Answers to the questionnaire were scored, absolute and relative frequencies were calculated. Correlation test was used to identify differences in different people’s categories. Analysis of questionnaire revealed a big difference in the dogs body language interpretation among all the categories of people. Aggression (85%), playful (63%) and non normal (76%) were behaviours more often identified by all the people. Great confusion and lack of uniformity with regard to other dogs behaviours suggest there are still many gaps in men and dogs communication.