Okay you very clearly do not know anything about canine body language. That’s fine, it’s not your fault.
What Millan is doing throughout this entire video is actually aggressive by dog body language, which a trainer should know at least a little.
Prolonged eye contact especially with unfamiliar or untrusting dogs can be extremely unnerving. How would you feel if someone you don’t know well or you do not trust, or both, in Holly’s situation, went right up to you and stared straight into your eyes? You would feel extremely uncomfortable correct? Well, that’s how Holly feels.
Look here, she looks away from Millan. This is a calming signal in dogs, something that a dog does when it wants to lessen the arousal state in an encounter.
And then look at this. At this point, Holly is not growling at all but because she is not “submissive” Millan leans over her head. Holly is already in a very vulnerable position. Her head is down, she has no way to defend herself quickly. She just wants to eat. But Millan takes advantage of her vulnerable positions and leans over her, putting her in an even scarier position. Look how tense his body is too. Barking and lunging dogs are really saying “keep away from me, I don’t want you near me.” They’re giving you a heads up that they don’t want you near them, giving you a fair warning. A still, tense dog is much more dangerous than a lunging and barking dog because that dog is conserving energy and is readying itself to attack you. It’s not going to give you a heads up. That is what Millan is displaying right now and Holly can tell.
So Holly has already been intimidated by this unfamiliar, untrustworthy man, he has her in a very vulnerable position and he is displaying all the signs of an attack. So Holly does that barking, growling and lunging thing. She growls, she nips him on the knee, she says “back off I don’t want you near me.”
And Millan strikes her instead.
You might see here that Holly goes right back to eating. She doesn’t want to engage with Millan, her thought process is basically “okay I’ve told him to back off plenty of times right he should just let me eat now.”
Here she is again, backing up and showing her teeth. Millan is still tense, still ready to strike. Holly is basically saying “hey you see these things!? They’re sharp, they’re my weapon I can hurt you with them but I don’t want to but stop hurting me! Just let me eat.”
Here she pulls back her teeth and displays more calming behaviors. That paw lift right there? That’s a calming behavior. When it doesn’t work and Millan keeps back her into a corner, she bares her teeth again, in yet another warning.
When her two other warnings aren’t received, she lunges at him. But this lunge is very slow. It’s actually another warning, probably to give another warning nip. Dogs are fast. If she really wanted to bite him here, she would have.
See all this lip licking, looking away and blinking she’s doing? More calming signals. Lying down down is also a calming signal and so is yawning, which she is doing in the last screenshot. Holly actually signals beautifully, it’s extremely upsetting that Millan isn’t reading her signals.
Looking away, lip licking, blinking. Again, more calming signals. She’s still very scared and responsibly too. This man is still in her face and he just hit her.
Millan calls these two shots “relaxed.” They’re not. She’s showing the whites of her eyes, which is a stress signal and she is looking towards her owner, saying “this guy is scaring me, can you help?”
She bites him only after he invades her personal space again. Imagine you just want to eat and an unfamiliar and intimidating man is continuously threatening you and has even hit you already. You try to calm him down with almost every method in the book but it still isn’t working. He is still keeping you away from your food, still very close to you and then he reaches out and pats your cheek. Say you have a knife on you and you haven’t used it yet but this man is still near you, still invading your space and you are terrified. So you jump up and stab him with the knife.
Holly bites him and holds on for only about three seconds before letting go. And make no mistake, despite the fact that he kicked her to get her to let go, she chose to let go herself. The kick he gave her was not strong and if she really tried to hurt him and hang on, she really would have.
After the bite, he stands directly over there and then even has the gall to stand there and say “I didn’t see that coming.” If Millan knew anything about canine body language, he would have seen that coming.
These are some good articles about dog body language and behaviors: click1, click2, click3
And here’s an amazing article written by a professional and certified dog trainer (which Millan is not by the way) on resource guarding, the behavior that Holly is exhibiting.
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