What Your Dog Is Trying To Tell You – 7th Edition – July 2025

Summary

Future PLC's Bath-based editor Zara Gaspar compiled the 7th-edition July 2025 issue of What Your Dog Is Trying to Tell You, pairing the 19 referential gestures identified by Dr Sean O'Hara at the University of Salford with case studies like Border Collie Chaser, who knew over 1,000 object names.

Zara Gaspar's editorial team at Future PLC in Bath compiled the 7th-edition July 2025 issue of What Your Dog Is Trying to Tell You, drawing on 14 named contributors including Adam Millward, Victoria Williams, Laura Mears and Rebecca Bradbury. The issue leans on published research from the University of Salford's Dr Sean O'Hara (19 referential gestures), Miami University's Allen McConnell and neuroscientist Gregory Berns, plus case studies like Border Collie Chaser who knew over 1,000 object names.

Articles span body-language charts and the 165-word canine vocabulary cap, then drill into vocalisations, weird habits (head tilts, bum sniffing, zoomies), and ten common bad behaviours with retraining scripts. Later sections walk through puppy socialisation windows, kids-and-dogs safety, the seven AKC breed groups, and a profile of how dogs perceive humans through a 250-degree visual field and a nose working 10,000 to 100,000 times more sharply than ours. You finish with a vet-warning checklist and an unlikely sensory-skills roundup.

Practical tone throughout — the issue is closer to a handbook than a coffee-table read. Three things stand out: real cited research (the 2018 O'Hara gestures paper, Takefumi Kikusui's oxytocin-gazing study, Berns' MRI work), named breeds and prices for any product plug (Lily's Kitchen treats at £2.75, Furbo monitor at £249), and step-by-step actions you can finish before bedtime. Skip the ad-heavy back third if you already own a dog.

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Content Guide

▸ Behaviour & Body Language

p.8 · Dog and Man

Crookes traces 14,000 to 34,000 years of canine partnership, from the 2015 Cairo catacomb find of 8 million mummified dogs to today's 80 million US dogs. It explains the wolf-licking greeting, Ancient Rome's lapdog status symbols and William the Conqueror's 1066 Talbot import — all reinforcing that your dog treats your family as its pack. Read this before arguing with a child that your dog does not love you back.

p.12 · How Smart Is Your Dog?

Victoria Williams breaks down canine cognition using Chaser the Border Collie, who learned over 1,000 object names by deduction; psychologist Stanley Coren's 165-word average and 250-word smartest-dog benchmark; and the 530 million cortical neurons versus cats' 250 million. It offers a concrete test: build a see-through barrier, place a treat behind, and time how fast your dog routes around it. Try this once a week and you'll know whether your dog is more Border Collie or Basset Hound.

p.16 · Body Language

Laura Mears' visual guide teaches you to read tails, ears, eyes and posture, with side-by-side angry, worried, stressed and happy dog comparisons. A tail held straight up means a dog has alpha-mixed confidence (and possible crossness), while a tucked tail signals anxiety you should respond to by removing the trigger. It also warns that a side-eye or 'whale eye' flash means your dog has reached its threshold. Use the four posture charts tonight before bed to check whether your dog is relaxed or coiled.

p.32 · Decoding Your Dog's Behaviour

Adam Millward walks through 19 referential gestures from Dr Hannah Worsley and Dr Sean O'Hara's 2018 Animal Cognition study of 103 canine gestures. It maps Head Turn, Paw Hover, Roll Over, Back Leg Up and Crawl Under to a clear ask: food, water, a retrieved toy, a door open, or a scratch. Practical takeaway: when your dog paws your leg, look at its eyes first — a soft gaze plus raised paw means 'play'; flattened ears plus panting means 'reassure me now'.

▸ Training & Family Life

p.29 · How to Approach a Dog

David Crookes flags six mistakes strangers make: grabbing a dog's head, planting a kiss on its face, lingering eye contact over two seconds, leaning over with an outstretched hand, hugging, and shouting. The fix is a sideways crouch, an offered but unforced hand, and letting the dog close the final 30 centimetres. Try this with the next dog you meet on a pavement and you'll see the difference within ten seconds — fewer whites-of-eye flashes and a softer body.

p.54 · Who's a Good Boy?

Puppy-training masterclass covering breeder selection (never buy from a car park), the six-item puppy checklist, and three core skills: name recognition (reward within 2 seconds), toilet routine (designated outdoor spot every hour), and socialisation window before 12 weeks. It warns against punishment and recommends clicker training with super-tasty treats. Concrete first task: book a Kennel Club puppy foundation course at a registered club in your county this month, before the socialisation window closes at 16 weeks.

p.60 · Dogs and Kids

Ella Carter lays out three golden rules: supervise every interaction (especially during feeding or toy-guarding), teach kids to ask before petting an unfamiliar dog, and split toys to avoid kids' Lego triggering gut blockages. It rates six family-friendly breeds — Golden Retriever, Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Labrador, Alaskan Malamute, Standard Poodle and Irish Setter — with one actionable step: set up a 'dog-only' bed corner and teach toddlers that retreat means retreat.

▸ Health, Breeds & Care

p.82 · How to Keep Your Dog Happy

Ella Carter's enrichment roundup covers homemade banana-and-peanut-butter pupcakes (180°C, 20 minutes, no Xylitol), snuffle mats, rotating toys, CaniCross harnesses from Non-Stop Dogwear, frozen chicken-stock pupsicles for hot days, dog monitors like Furbo at £249, and a weekly second-dog playdate. It also recommends Lily's Kitchen treats at £2.75 for clicker training. First move this weekend: spend 20 minutes building a snuffle mat from a towel and kibble to drain your dog's mental energy.

p.90 · Warning Signs

Jamie Frier's five-spot checklist for trouble: vomiting, loss of appetite, overshedding, over- or under-sleeping, and sudden aggression. Each symptom names likely causes — heatstroke, dental pain, anxiety from a house move, illness, or hidden injury — and recommends a vet visit when behaviour changes for no obvious reason. Actionable step: weigh your dog monthly and log food intake, sleep hours and shedding in a notes app so you have a baseline to show the vet.

p.92 · Finding Fido

Bee Ginger profiles seven AKC breed groups — Working (Great Dane, Saint Bernard), Sporting (Cocker Spaniel, Golden Retriever), Hound (Beagle, Greyhound), Non-Sporting (Dalmatian, French Bulldog), Herding (Border Collie, German Shepherd), Terrier (Jack Russell, Staffordshire Bull Terrier), and Toy (Chihuahua, Pug). Each comes with 7 bullet traits and a top breed tip. Actionable step: before picking a puppy, score your home on garden size, exercise hours per day and child age to match against the breed traits list.

p.112 · Things You Should Never Do With Your Dog

Ella Carter's hard-line list covers leaving dogs alone in cars (even cracked windows fail above 20°C), tying them outside shops (2020 saw seven pets stolen daily in the UK), letting them run with sticks, using clippers on double coats like Huskies or Labradors, and assuming human comfort tactics work on scared dogs. The pack-leader trick — a calm, firm 'it's alright' instead of cuddles — is the single most counter-intuitive takeaway. Memorise the four-step 'never assume your dog has human needs' routine.

▸ Senses & Discovery

p.118 · 10 Incredible Sensory Skills

Ten sensory superpowers from pregnancy detection and diabetes-alert (with caveats — devices beat dogs) through cancer-sniffing in sweat and breath, earthquake prediction via P-wave hearing, magnetic-field alignment during toilet stops, seizure alerting, ghost-spotting (more likely small-motion detection), and pest detection for bed bugs and termites. One study found medical detection dogs hit 90 percent accuracy sniffing Covid-19. Practical test: track your dog's reaction to barometric-pressure drops using a phone barometer to confirm the storm-prediction theory in your own garden.

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Editor's Take

This is a working manual for first-time puppy owners rather than a glossy breed parade. The strongest material is Laura Mears' body-language visual key on page 16 and Adam Millward's decode of Dr Sean O'Hara's 19 referential gestures on page 32 — both translate peer-reviewed findings into actions you can take on tonight's walk. The weakest is the 10 sensory skills chapter, which repeats itself on cancer, diabetes and Covid detection without naming a single training protocol. Photo quality leans heavily on Getty stock; some pages recycle the same Labrador across three spreads. Most useful for owners who already share their sofa with a dog and want a manual that explains why their pet does what it does.

Strengths
• Cites named researchers and real studies, not folklore
• Body-language chapter turns peer-reviewed gestures into 19 usable rules
• Practical UK prices on Lily's Kitchen, Furbo and Animology kit

Weaknesses
• Sensory skills chapter repeats itself across cancer, diabetes and Covid sections
• Photo-heavy spreads lean on a small pool of Getty stock images

Verdict: Recommended — Solid behaviour manual with cited research; uneven photography and filler chapters keep it from essential.