When Joe Biden made a visit to the Áras, he stopped to say hello to our president Michael D Higgins' dog, two-year-old Misneach, who seemed a little taken aback by all the goings on, and barked at the US president. Expert dog behaviourist Suzi Walsh joined Sarah McInerney on RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime to explain what it means when dogs bark at you and what we can read into a bark. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full above).
"A bark can mean lots of different things. In this case, when I had a look at the footage, Misneach was just a bit nervous. He didn't really know what was going on and he was just a bit scared, so he was basically barking to say, 'give me space' or 'keep your distance, or keep away', 'I'm not comfortable, I'm not happy right now,' explains Walsh.
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From RTÉ News, Michael D Higgins' dog Misneach pops out to see president Biden - but he won't say hello
Did it matter that Biden had sunglasses on? 'Yeah, the way president Biden was leaning forward to him, had sunglasses on, there was quite a number of people standing a little bit apart, which would be probably quite unusual. They weren't close together.
'Also there was another dog, I don't know if anybody else heard it, but there's another dog in the background that wasn't Misneach, barking in quite an upset manner. So that could have upset [Misneach] too.'
That type of behaviour was an accumulation of different things, says Walsh. It could have been whatever was going on earlier in the day, it could be how Misneach was feeling on a particular day, it wasn't one particularly thing. 'I certainly don't think it was president Biden himself alone, that Misneach decided, 'I don't like him,' definitely not,' she added.
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Even President Higgins couldn't get Misneach to come over, so is there any way of getting dogs to behave when you really need them to or are they just a bit like children, who will do what they want?
'They say never work with animals or kids, and there is a little bit of that. But absolutely, you can definitely improve Misneach's behavior when it comes to people coming into the the Áras. Everybody has had that since lockdown, so many dogs are nervous about people coming into their environment, because they didn't have it at the beginning,' Walsh says.
'You can definitely do a whole loads of things. You can teach them to hand target. You can teach them a brilliant game called the engaged/disengaged game and it teaches the dog, basically, that strangers are people coming in, who are actually friendly and actually good. Or anyone that their person is with, that those people are safe to be around and enjoyable to be around for the dog.'
