Why Do Dogs Move in Circles Before They Lay Down?

Recent shows about animal behavior are very common on television today and many already cover aspects of the behavior of the dog. It is great to see such shows helping pet owners learn how to control their pets and become better companions. A lot of pet owners problems are related to the "dominance" of the dog in relation to the "pack". In the home, the pack may be the pet owners or other dogs in the same house or both.

You may have noticed that dogs often travel around and around in a small circle before they actually lay down. Many animal behaviorists believe that this is a behavior that goes far back into the earliest of times when dogs first inhabited the Earth.

Dogs were originally wild, but became gradually domesticated. When wild, one behavior was to move in a circular pattern several times in an effort to "tap" down tall grass. Dogs would then gain in two ways, they would produce grass bedding upon which to lie down, but they would also gain a little extra visibility in the tall grass. Even after domestication, this behavior continues even though it is not needed for the domesticated dog. The "wolf" is the wild dog in our world and it has been shown to display some complex social behaviors.

Man has genetically bred out much of the wildness of some dogs and created many varieties. Each variety has some common behaviors of all dogs and some specific behaviors and characteristics unique to that species. Some species have been designed to keep some wild characteristics and even to make some of those characteristics more pronounced. Even as such selective breeding produces many types of dogs, many will still move in circles before lying down. It is amazing how such behavior persists.

It is important to realize that many animals exhibit behavior that harkens back to a time in their evolutionary past. Dogs although domesticated, still have instincts and behaviors that occasionally show their "wild" past. When dogs urinate, they often are marking their domain. They do not completely get all the liquid out of their body, but save enough to allow them to mark other locations as needed.

There was a band that was called "Three Dog Night" and this refers to an Australian concept that if it is very cold out, you may need to sleep with three dogs to keep warm. I guess that would mean there must be "two dog nights" also when it is not so cold. The study of dog behavior has recently found that the degree of the wag of the tail of a dog and the direction (right or left) is partly determined by the temperament at the time. If a dog is seeing their owner the tail wag is different than when the dog sees a stranger. These types of observations are somewhat easier to make in this day and age through the use of video cameras and computers.

The exciting point here is that the behavior of dogs still has the potential for discovery and this discovery is not limited to scientists, but should still be subjected to the "scientific method". Many times such discovery is actually best conducted by average people, not scientists, who may not consider such observations worthy of their time. Because many children have dogs in their home, teaching them about observations they can easily see provides a reinforcement in their learning about their relationship in the biotic community of the world.