Curious: Puffing Air Through Cheeks

[Guest Giselle]

Almost positive that this is for olfaction. It's a very specific behavior that you can see in trained dogs, i.e. performing Nosework or other scent work. Dogs are olfactory animals, first and foremost. Scent means EVERYTHING to them. Puffing air, or forcefully directing air through their oral/nasal cavities, is probably a method of "sampling" the air. Would make sense that it tends to happen outside, when the wind is picking up all sorts of interesting scents.

[Rustyroo]

My bridge baby Solo used to do it all the time when he was just sitting around relaxing in his chair.

[Guest k9soul]

Almost positive that this is for olfaction. It's a very specific behavior that you can see in trained dogs, i.e. performing Nosework or other scent work. Dogs are olfactory animals, first and foremost. Scent means EVERYTHING to them. Puffing air, or forcefully directing air through their oral/nasal cavities, is probably a method of "sampling" the air. Would make sense that it tends to happen outside, when the wind is picking up all sorts of interesting scents.

 

Maybe he just has flappier cheeks than my past dogs

 

Being outside I figured it may be something like that, but I wonder why he does inside when relaxing and getting stroked? Maybe taking in scent is a part of experiencing the pleasure of it? I'm always wondering about the specifics of little things dogs do

[silverfish]

I don't think it's always for olfaction. You do see it in scent following dogs, but that serves a different purpose according to what I've read. The scent-sampling cells lining the vomero-nasal organ get 'tired' and the dog needs to rest and refresh them - according the Stanley Coren! The 'blowing out' thing in scent dogs may be because of this, I don't know.

 

This seems to be different though. What I'm seeing in my dogs is more like a heavy sigh which happens to puff out the cheeks.

[Guest Giselle]

I wouldn't put too much faith in Stanley Coren. He's pretty old school, doesn't do active research on dogs, and is not very scientifically rigorous when it comes to his writings on dogs. He uses personal anecdotes to support his arguments and does not often cite the real, hard, cold literature. Plus, he's written a lot of frustrating popular articles/books about how some breeds are basically dumber than others. As a sighthound lover, you can understand why he aggravates me ...

 

The outdoor puffing is likely air sampling. The indoor puffing sounds like a relaxing behavior, like a sigh variant. My two cents.

Edited October 25, 2013 by Giselle

[silverfish]

I like Stanley Coren. The difference between him and many people who write dog behaviour books is that he is primarily a human psychologist so of course he's not quite so 'dog-based' and almost certainly doesn't do his own research. To be fair, most people who write dog behaviour books don't, either.

 

I've read two or three and I haven't seen him say that some breeds are dumber than others, only that certain breeds have different strengths and weaknesses.

[Guest k9soul]

I've read a couple of Coren's things and enjoyed them. He is not as heavily scientific but I have found him to have some nice insights.

 

Science is always evolving, changing, and proving previous scientific knowledge to be incorrect. I think sometimes someone who has simply been around dogs for 50 years (just as an example) can have a lot to offer in insight even if they aren't an accredited scientist, though I agree science provides at least a skeletal foundation on which to build on.

[Guest Gemma]

Peyton does this, too. For him, it is definitely a contented/relaxed thing. He will do this when being loved on, when deeply asleep, and when enjoying the yard. It is SO endearing!

[Guest Addie]

London does that too and it does sound like a horse noise! I love love love it!!! So cute

[MaryJane]

My youngest Adam does this ... I call him my puffer face ..

[Guest BrindleLuv]

I ride and have owned horses and they do a similar snorting/blowing noises so I found it very amusing when my greyhound, Trapper, did it the first time. He does it when he is falling asleep or content or smells something interesting. Sometimes I swear he does it when his annoyed with me, like when I'm taking to long to get my shoes on.

 

[Guest Giselle]

Maybe I'm just stuck reading his old work, but he writes extremely controversial and sometimes flat-out misleading/wrong statements about dog intelligence and trainability. He has a whole section on "canine IQ" in one of his books that misinterprets many behaviors. Example: he used the food-under-a-can test as a black/white test of a dog's problem solving ability. If a dog can figure it out and flip over the can to get the food, the dog is more intelligent. If not, the dog is less intelligent. This is flat-out wrong when evidence suggests that a dog's problem-solving ability is actually its incredible ability to utilize humans as a solution (i.e. Miklosi's research). He also likes to write (false/misleading/frustrating) comments about social structures and dominance: "A dog that bears a grudge or acts aggrieved and sulks after being corrected or forced to do something it did not want to do will be difficult to train" (Intelligence of Dogs, p 198). Yikes... I can't even start to deconstruct this statement... I also have done literature searches on him in the databases, and I can't find a single peer-reviewed primary research article. Because he's a prolific popular science writer, much of the public takes his writing and opinions as scientific fact, and I think this is incredibly dangerous when he does not have an accurate foundation in dog behavior or applied ethology. Science is an incredibly resilient and rigorous field precisely because we are always trying to poke holes in each others' theories and we're constantly revising our understandings of general phenomenae. In my opinion, Coren doesn't seem to be devoted to dog behavior as a science but merely as a means of furthering his own opinions and unproven ideas. That's my problem with his writings! And, hey, if you think I'm harsh, you should check out the debate over dogs, social learning, and theory of mind in the current literature! Some big egos out there are constantly heckling each other

[Brandiandwe]

Lol. All of ours do this, but Hermon especially. Last night, he did it at DH for the first time because he was annoyed! DH is treating a little scrape and was bandaging Hermon up. I walked out of the bedroom and saw Hermon looking at DH with fish eyes and huffing at him, while DH was explaining to him like he was a human child why this was necessary. I cracked up.