Canine Behavior & Body Language Flashcards
7 cards from real CDT practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Canine Behavior & Body Language flashcards as text
A dog living in a multi-dog household begins resource guarding its food bowl only after a new dog is introduced. What does this suggest?
Answer: The dog's motivation to protect valued resources increased due to perceived competition
Resource guarding often increases when a dog perceives a genuine threat to its access to valued items from a competitor.
Which body language cluster most reliably indicates that two dogs are engaged in balanced, mutual play?
Answer: Role reversals, self-handicapping, and reciprocal play bows
Healthy play is characterized by reciprocity—dogs take turns, self-handicap, and voluntarily return after breaks.
A dog displays 'predatory drift'—transitioning from play into predatory behavior. Which sign most commonly precedes this shift?
Answer: A sudden freeze, then a hard stalking stalk with lowered head and high arousal
Predatory drift is often preceded by freezing, intense fixation, and a crouched stalking posture signaling a prey-mode shift.
In classical conditioning terms, why do many dogs develop a fearful response to the sight of the veterinary clinic parking lot?
Answer: The parking lot has become a conditioned stimulus paired repeatedly with aversive experiences
Through Pavlovian conditioning, neutral stimuli (parking lot) paired with aversive events (fear/pain) become conditioned fear triggers.
A dog that has been punished for growling at children may stop growling but later bite without warning. What does this illustrate?
Answer: Suppression of warning signals without addressing underlying emotional state
Punishing growling removes a warning signal without changing the underlying fear/discomfort, making bites more likely and less predictable.
What is 'trigger stacking' in canine behavior?
Answer: The cumulative effect of multiple stressors that together exceed the dog's threshold for reaction
Trigger stacking occurs when multiple individually tolerable stressors accumulate, pushing the dog past its bite or reactivity threshold.
Which of the following best describes the 'ladder of aggression' concept in applied dog behavior?
Answer: A progression of escalating warning signals from subtle to severe that a dog uses before biting
The ladder of aggression illustrates how dogs progress through increasingly obvious warning signals when lower-level signals are ignored.