The News
Right happy pooches
Dogs' truest emotions? Study finds they're all in the wag
By Sandra Blakeslee The New York Times
Article Last Updated: 04/24/2007 12:17:48 AM MDT

Every dog lover knows how a pooch expresses its feelings.
Ears close to the head, tense posture and tail straight out from the body mean "don't mess with me." Ears perked up, wriggly body and vigorously wagging tail mean "I am sooo happy to see you!"
But there is another, newly discovered feature of dog body language: When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging goes left.
A study describing the phenomenon appeared in the March 20 issue of Current Biology. The authors are Giorgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist at the University of Trieste in Italy, and two veterinarians, Angelo Quaranta and Marcello Siniscalchi of the University of Bari, also in Italy.

The Research
Read the research behind this story in the journal Current Biology.