Key facts at a glance
- Yawning in dogs is often a sign of tiredness.
- Yawning can be used to calm dogs, reduce stress and indicate insecurity.
- By yawning, the dog’s body takes in extra oxygen.
- Dogs sometimes get infected when their owner yawns.
Tired dogs yawn
Compared to us humans, dogs need much more rest and sleep. They spend around 17 hours a day dozing and sleeping. Puppies and old animals often even last more than 20 hours.
For dogs, yawning can therefore mean that they want to rest and do not want to be disturbed.
Yawning in dogs as a signal to calm down
In many cases, yawning can simply be a sign of tiredness in dogs. However, there are a number of other reasons why a dog yawns. In fact, yawning is an important signal that dogs use to communicate with each other.
They use it, for example, to calm themselves down and to soothe their peers in sticky situations.
Yawning is used by dogs to relieve stress
There are many factors that can cause stress in dogs. These include illnesses, physical stress, great joy or changes, such as a move or a holiday trip.
It can happen that a stressful situation overwhelms your four-legged friend and is perceived as extremely unpleasant. In this case, yawning will help your dog relieve stress.
Yawning in insecure dogs
In addition to the triggers mentioned, yawning in dogs can also represent a skip action. For example, if your four-legged friend does not know exactly what behavior you expect from him in a certain situation, he may show his insecurity by yawning.
This can be the case, for example, when learning a new command that your dog does not yet know. With the help of yawning as a skip action, he tries to reduce his excitement or his insecurity in this situation.
Dog yawning due to lack of oxygen
When you yawn, your body takes in a lot of oxygen. This supplies the body cells and helps your dog to become more alert. Especially when dogs have been physically strenuous, it can often be observed that they yawn in order to get more energy with the help of the oxygen they have taken in.
When owners infect their dog with yawns
It is well known that yawning is contagious and that we often have to yawn as well. The situation is similar with dogs, which can infect each other with yawns.
In addition, it is even assumed that owners can infect their dogs with their yawns. Sometimes it can also be the case that your four-legged friend simply yawns because of you.