[cerulia]

Hello all,
our girl is a great, fast runner and climber. She's very happily active and comes for hikes with us all the time. Once in a while when she and my husband are playing in the yard, she runs with her tail under. I'm wondering if it's a submissive thing or a hip thing? I don't really see evidence of hip problems otherwise but I also don't entirely know what to look for. She also is very laid back and generally submissive...Any opinions?

 

[Locket]

Highly unlikely that it's a hip issue. Sounds more like a scared behaviour.

 

[Olie]

And when they have a scared behavior they can become very or overly submissive.
I have one that has done something similar since we brought her home. And other other thing is licking.

 

[KPoos]

How old is she? Puppies go through fear stages. If she's not exposed to something often it will make the tail go down. Harry didn't walk with his tail up on our walk the other day because he's not used to this neighborhood.

 

[Fluffyspoos]

My dog tucks her whole butt under sometimes when she's doing zoombies, but she's got a huge smile on her face and has happy breathing.. so it's just how she does her zoombies. Personally, I think it's HILARIOUS because she's so cute when she does it.

Is your dog running like that? Or like.. glancing back over it's shoulder really unsure looking when she does it?

 

[WonderPup]

It could be a fear/submissive type thing. Or it could be excitement. Our girl Jazz runs like that from time to time when she really gets riled up in the backyard. Most of the time we are playing keep away with a toy or tossing a ball or she's trying to get us to wrestle, which we don't allow. She kind of tucks her butt under a little bit to and her movements are more jerky sometimes too. She also displays this with our other spoo in play as well as with our two smaller dogs when she's trying to play with them. It would be easy to mistake that for a submission signal but in her case it isn't, especially not concerning the other three dogs in the household.

Without actually seeing it one can't really make a determination.

You can't always trust a dog's tail, you have to look at the whole picture. Plus where exactly the tail is when it isn't up gives a lot of differnt clues to. For instance when my younger spoo is stressed her tail just hangs down. It isn't tucked ever but if it were it would be a stressed response unless the rest of her body lingo disagreed. With Jazz I've never seen her tuck her tail except the day we got her and she was understandably stressed then. Otherwise the tucked tail/butt occures in play.

 

[mercymoon]

My dog tucks her whole butt under sometimes when she's doing zoombies, but she's got a huge smile on her face and has happy breathing.. so it's just how she does her zoombies. Personally, I think it's HILARIOUS because she's so cute when she does it.

My dogs do that too sometimes, we call it the "butt tuck run" LOL, it is funny!

 

[cerulia]

My dog tucks her whole butt under sometimes when she's doing zoombies, but she's got a huge smile on her face and has happy breathing.. so it's just how she does her zoombies. Personally, I think it's HILARIOUS because she's so cute when she does it.

Is your dog running like that? Or like.. glancing back over it's shoulder really unsure looking when she does it?

I would definitely say she's having a blast--that's why it's confusing. I know by nature she's a little shy but it seems she's really enjoying herself despite her posture. She adores chasing us around the yard and jumping. It is funny to watch it but I wondered if I was being a bad dog owner by not being suspicious of a hip thing...

It's good to hear your dogs do it too though.

 

[KPoos]

Yeah see the difference with Harry's tail tuck was that he would look over his shoulder at noises. He was unsure and that was pretty obvious. Maybe she's just tucking her tail to run faster? She's got the scoop on aerodynamics or something?

 

[mercymoon]

Yeah see the difference with Harry's tail tuck was that he would look over his shoulder at noises. He was unsure and that was pretty obvious. Maybe she's just tucking her tail to run faster? She's got the scoop on aerodynamics or something?

Good theory me thinks! LOL!

 

[flyingduster]

heheh yeah, my girls tuck their tails when doing the looney zoomies too!