Comment by aznpwnzor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aznpwnzor | Hacker News Reader

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> To approach a dog politely, instead of walking straight towards the dog in our very human direct way, you could walk in a slight curve. On approach, turning your shoulder away ever so slightly can put a dog at ease and is polite.

This is an interesting suggestion given that in my experience, dogs do not exhibit curving towards humans. Dogs that make eye contact with me, usually make a beeline towards me regardless of their leash condition. It seems like dogs have learned that humans do not curve and approach directly. This is probably similar tho how dogs can read human facial expressions even better than they can read dog expressions.

I would not be surprised if most dogs are socialized to humans (vs they need to be socialized with other dogs)

my dog does that too, beelines toward people, even those on bikes and scooters (sigh). she's conditioned to think she'll get pets and maybe a treat from people.

on the flipside, people who dislike or fear dogs tend to try to (nervously) walk around her (she's all of 16 lbs, but friendly and vivacious). she finds that behavior either curious or suspicious, and in both cases, she'll go directly toward you to investigate.

for people who dislike/fear dogs, the best thing to do when facing a dog out-and-about is to ignore them completely, as if they weren't even there (especially no eye contact), but human instincts defy us there too.

Humans being bipedal and "vertical" might have something to do with it too, if the idea is to signal oneself as not being "head-on" it might not be so intuitive with a human, whose "front" (including the face) is always looking at the dog from above, and whose side is not that distinctive.

I've also seen this, but in addition—and also contrary to what the article says about curving being polite—from anecdotal examples in a lot of dogs, I'd equate curving with recognition/familiarity.

If I meet a dog I know well on the street after a long absence, the dog will beeline (not immediately recognising me, but just liking to engage with humans in general), and then after being stopped in their tracks upon recognising me, immediately begin curving.

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