Today we're going to discuss consent! It's essential for anyone interacting with pets to understand yes and no, especially when it comes to pet consent. 
Dogs and cats do have the ability to give consent and remove it, just like us! This is a great way to teach children about the basics of consent. 

However, to do that, we need to know what yes and no signals might be, and you'd be surprised how bad people are at this in general. 

Many people will say the dog was wagging their tail before they bit me. This is a failure to understand dog body language and what it means! 

It takes me at least thirty minutes to cover the basics of body language in dogs, so understand this is very involved, and there are many different signals dogs and cats use in many scenarios. However, to get you started, let's look at some hard no, soft no or no, thank-you signals, soft yes, and hard yes body language. 

Please know that every dog can be slightly different and body language depends greatly on the context of the situation. Below is a video of soft yes and no signals. You'll see Winston push into me for more attention when I check in or turn his head away or even blink, jerk his head away, close his mouth and lengthen his lips for the hard no. Dogs are only loud and threaten to bite as a last resort!

Whether you have pets or not, understanding the body language and what they're saying is essential. If you'd like to learn more, please contact me. I'm happy to teach pet parents, as much as people that don't own pets, about body language as it's essential knowledge to preventing bites.