Hug Your Hound Day

What the day is

Hug Your Hound Day is observed on September 13. It encourages owners to spend deliberate time with their dogs rather than the usual distracted minimum, and it is commonly attributed to an American dog trainer, though the documentation is thin.

Origin and background

The day's premise deserves one honest correction. Dogs generally do not enjoy hugs the way people do. A hug is physical restraint, and restraint is not a friendly signal in canine terms. Studies looking at photographs of hugged dogs have found a high proportion showing recognized stress signals, and trainers and veterinary behaviorists have been saying the same for years.

Those signals are learnable in about a minute, and once you can see them you cannot unsee them: the head turned away, the whites of the eyes showing in a crescent, lips licked when there is no food, ears flattened, a yawn that is not tiredness, or a paw lifted and held. A dog doing these things is tolerating something, not enjoying it.

Some dogs genuinely do like being held, usually ones that have been handled that way since puppyhood by someone they trust completely. The point is not that hugging is cruel; it is that it should be the dog's preference rather than the assumption, and that children in particular should be taught the difference, since face-level hugging is a common precursor to bites.

What dogs overwhelmingly do want is less ambiguous: attention, movement, and the chance to use their nose.

How to take part

• Let the dog choose. Sit down, wait, and see what it comes to you for.
• Take a sniffing walk rather than a brisk one. Letting a dog stop and investigate is mentally tiring in a way that distance is not.
• Scratch the chest and the base of the neck rather than patting the top of the head, which most dogs merely tolerate.
• Learn the stress signals above, then watch the next photograph of a hugged dog you see.
• Book the overdue vet or dental check, which is a less charming but more useful form of affection.
• If the dog leans in and stays, hug away. Plenty do.