Dogs are significantly more adept at reading our body language than we are at reading theirs when it comes to communication. Dogs are the exact opposite of humans in that they place more emphasis on body language than verbal communication.
Sadly, this frequently leaves us perplexed, wondering what our dogs are trying to tell us. Shaking is one of these potentially confusing behaviors.
If your dog is wet, you may have wondered why they need to shake. That shaking, however, is surprisingly efficient. In just four seconds, wet dogs can remove 70% of the water from their fur. Although it’s not as good for our bathrooms, that is much more efficient than our attempts to towel-dry our dogs.
Dry dogs shake, too. If your dog shakes their entire body for no apparent reason, such as after a bath or a good roll in the dirt, it may be due to stress. Shaking is a classic symptom of stress in dogs. Your dog is attempting to release tension when he shakes after jumping off the examination table at the vet’s office or after interacting with a stranger.
Shaking is often used interchangeably with the words shivering and trembling to describe distressed puppies. Certain toy and small terrier breeds shiver more than others. This kind of shivering can be a sign of pain. When your dog is nauseous, she may also shake. To make sure there isn’t a more serious problem to deal with, speak with your veterinarian if your dog has started to shake for no apparent reason.
All dog breeds get ear infections. However, owners of breeds like Cocker Spaniels, Basset Hounds, Labrador Retrievers, and Golden Retrievers who are more susceptible to ear infections should be on the lookout for excessive head shaking. If your dog is shaking his head after taking a recent bath or swim, it’s quite likely that he has an ear infection. Additional issues like an ear hematoma (when blood builds up in the ear flap) can result from this shaking. After their dogs have been in the water, owners should always completely dry their dogs’ ears. Check your dog’s ears carefully to see if they appear red, inflamed, dirty, or have a funky smell if your dog is shaking his head more than usual, and then consult a veterinarian.
If your dog consumes chocolate, cigarettes, or any of the numerous human products containing xylitol, such as sugar-free gum, they could experience trembling, seizures, vomiting, diarrhea, and even die as a result. If you believe your dog has consumed one of these items, contact your veterinarian or the Pet Poison Helpline right away.
Shaking may indicate an unexpected change in blood chemistry. Shaking can be brought on by hypoglycemia or low blood sugar, says Dr Jerry Klein, AKC chief veterinary officer. Young puppies and small-breed dogs are most susceptible to this condition. Maintaining a balanced diet and a regular feeding schedule for your dog can help prevent hypoglycemia. However, your dog’s veterinarian should determine the cause of any shaking and treat it if it is a sign of another underlying condition.
A virus called canine distemper can make dogs tremble and shake. Unvaccinated dogs and puppies are most at risk. The infected dog should be kept apart from other dogs because the virus needs to run its course and is highly contagious. The doctor will deal with the signs, might recommend antibiotics to stop secondary infections, and may advise keeping the dog hydrated to avoid dehydration.
On a chilly day after a short swim and an outing, my 13-year-old dog began shaking. The vet suggested that this was most likely a result of my old dog’s body no longer being able to effectively control his temperature. Warming him up with blankets stopped the shaking. Due to muscle loss, senior dogs occasionally also experience tremors in their legs, particularly the hind ones.
White dog shaker syndrome and corticosteroid responsive tremor syndrome are additional names for GTS. Although small white dogs were the first to exhibit this condition, which causes full-body shaking, it has been observed in dogs of all breeds and sizes. The cause of this syndrome is unknown. The veterinarian usually prescribes corticosteroids like prednisone.
We might worry that our dog is having a seizure if we notice him shaking erratically. Seizures can manifest as prolonged, uncontrollable shaking, but they can also cause muscle contractions, jerking movements, collapse, and momentary unconsciousness, according to Dr. Klein. Always alert the vet if you suspect your dog had a seizure. There are numerous causes, with idiopathic epilepsy being the most prevalent. Anticonvulsant drugs are typically used to treat this condition.
My dog trembles every time I let the door to the backyard open and tell her to “wait” because she wants to go outside. She trembles as she waits at the front door for my daughter. She trembles when we’re out walking and she sees my neighbors, but I tell her to “go say hi” before she stops. When a dog is given access to the source of her excitement, shaking can occasionally just be a sign of happy excitement in that dog.
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Shaking water from a dog’s fur is a survival skill
I recently finished bathing Ripley, my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. I then reach for a towel to dry him off, and he responds by shaking like a wet dog. I’m now completely drenched in water, while my dog is almost dry. I snort in response to this and feel a little silly for not having the towel nearby. When David Hu, a professor of biology and engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, saw a similar occurrence involving his fiancée’s miniature poodle Jerry, he hurried the dog inside his lab and started wetting it down while videotaping its reactions with an ultra high-speed camera.
As it turns out, we weren’t really aware of how these shakes functioned until Dr. Hu and his students Andrew Dickerson and Zachary Mills used water hoses, cameras, and advanced mathematics to tackle the issue. They discovered that a dog can remove almost 70% of the water from its fur in just 4 seconds.
The first thing to consider is why shaking a dog’s fur is such an efficient way of doing it. The mechanics are puzzling. A dog’s backbone cannot actually turn around quickly or far enough to accomplish the task. If you picture a clock face with the backbone at 12 o’clock, it can only move about 30° in either direction, so it is actually only twisting between the 11 and 1 marks. However, the fact that dogs have very loose skin greatly aids the drying process. Because of this, when the dog shakes, his skin actually swings 90 degrees in either direction, which on a clock face would move between the hours of 9 and 3. Furthermore, the skin is whipping far faster than the backbone. In order to protect their eyes from the extremely high centripetal forces, the animals are forced to close their eyes, which produce forces between 10 and 70 times greater than those of gravity.
After studying 16 wet species at Zoo Atlanta, including mice, dogs, tigers, and bears, the Georgia researchers discovered that this shaking trick is not specific to dogs. When so many furry species exhibit this same adaptation, one must wonder why it originally evolved. Well let’s consider a simple scenario. You are the ancestor of the dog we know today, and you just crossed a chilly stream while being drenched in water. You must thoroughly dry off because water reduces your fur’s ability to act as insulation, and if you don’t have anything to keep your body warm, you risk dying of hypothermia. You must find a way to dry yourself if there isn’t a warm sun to help with some of the evaporation. Imagine that you were unable to shake the water off. That means that in order to warm the air and perform the evaporation, you would have to use your body’s heat. That would expend a lot of energy. For example, Dr. According to Hu’s team, air-drying a wet 60-pound dog with one pound of water in its fur would require 20% of its daily caloric intake. Being dry in cold weather is essential to an animal’s survival because moisture negates the process by which fur traps warm air between the hairs to provide insulation. The shaking mechanism, on the other hand, is a very energy-efficient way to get mostly dry.
This study also revealed an intriguing additional finding: Animals can adjust the frequency of their oscillations when they shake. The primary requirement is to exert sufficient force to cause the water to be thrown away from their bodies. Think of two wheels: one with a large radius and the other with a much smaller radius. Now imagine that we want to spin the wheels to cause the water droplets on each of the wheels to fly off. Centripetal force physics dictate that in order to generate the energy required to shed the water, we would need to spin the smaller wheel much faster. The same goes for animals. In comparison to a smaller dog, a larger dog (with a larger body radius) can tolerate slower shaking oscillations. The scientists discovered that Labrador Retrievers shake at a rate of 4 as a result. A Chihuahua shakes at 6 Hz (Hz is a measure of cycles per second). 8 Hz. If we compare extremely large animals to extremely small animals, we can see a much more extreme variation in the rate of shaking. The research team discovered that while a brown bear only needs to shake at a rate of 4 Hz to dry off, a mouse must shake at a rate of 29 Hz.
Shaking doesn’t really provide much of an effective drying solution for us relatively hairless humans. So, instead of attempting to shake like an overstimulated breakdancer after your shower, use the towel.
You can see a fascinating video showing these shaking behaviors in dogs and other species by clicking here.
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Is Shaking A Sign Of Pain In Dogs?
Shaking can be a sign of pain among other reasons. Pain is often exhibited through shaking in the hind legs, common in older dogs who have developed joint pain. Arthritis is one reason for shaking from pain in dogs.
Even though shaking because of pain isn’t always an emergency, a veterinarian should still be consulted. Your pet’s pain can be addressed by your veterinarian, who can also assist you in finding a treatment plan.
While trembling or shaking can indicate pain, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that your dog is trembling or shaking for another, more serious reason.
Severe Medical Situations Indicated by Shaking
Shaking should prompt a visit to the veterinarian, especially when it is combined with other worrying symptoms. Shaking for an extended period of time and in conjunction with symptoms like vomiting can be a sign of a serious medical condition, even if it’s a false alarm.
A virus called canine distemper most frequently affects puppies and young dogs who have not received all of their recommended vaccinations. It attacks the gastrointestinal, nervous, and respiratory systems. Most often it is fatal.
A common symptom of distemper is shaking and shivering, along with other symptoms like:
Distemper must be treated by a veterinarian. Consult your veterinarian right away if you believe your dog may have canine distemper.
Nausea is a symptom of a number of other problems. Most notably:
Nausea can be identified by:
If your pet shows persistent symptoms of nausea, call your veterinarian right away.
Shaker syndrome and steroid responsive tremors are additional names for generalized tremor syndrome. This manifests as rhythmic, continuous, and involuntary tremors. It might only affect one part of the body or make the whole body tremble.
Although the exact cause of GTS is unknown, it is believed to be autoimmune-related. It is a “diagnosis of exclusion,” which means your pet’s doctor will eliminate every other possibility.
Epilepsy, a neurological condition that causes collapsing and jerking, affects some dogs. This could manifest as a dog falling and paddling its legs like it’s swimming.
Although seizures do not physically hurt the dog, they can result in injury if the dog falls or knocks things over and onto themselves while they are having them.
In the event that your dog starts to experience episodes of seizing, call your veterinarian right away. This can be treated using medications that control seizures.
While there are many different poisoning symptoms, shaking and seizures are the most common ones. Certain substances that are not necessarily toxic to humans can poison dogs. Major toxins include cigarettes, xylitol, and chocolate.
Contact your veterinarian or take your pet right away to the closest emergency veterinary clinic if you think they may have ingested something toxic.
FAQ
What makes a dog shake?
Your dog may shake and shiver for a variety of reasons, including the cold, excitement, stress and anxiety, needing attention, pain or illness, and old age. It’s important to recognize the difference between normal shaking vs. signs of a seizure.
How can dogs shake so fast?
Unlike humans, mammals with fur typically have loose skin that whips around as the animal changes direction, accelerating the animal. That’s crucial to shaking success, said the researchers.
What do dogs do when shaking?
When they become overly excited or when they anticipate something exciting, many dogs will shake. When you play with your dog, when they see something exciting on a walk, or when they greet you at the door after you leave, you might have noticed your dog shaking.
Do dogs naturally shake?
Not all the reasons behind your dog’s shaking are negative. Dogs frequently shake when they are excited, such as when they are playing with you or you have just arrived home from work. This is actually a physiological response that they naturally have to release excess energy and calm down.