Dog Side Eye – What it Means

Introduction

There are a plethora of memes on TikTok showcasing dog personalities with the classic dog side eye which people assume is the dog showing attitude. The real reason is a little more simple. Let me explain…

Reasons for dog side eye

Dogs are not humans, which means they don’t experience emotions in the same way we do and their facial expressions are largely based on how we react to them. They’ve learned that the classic puppy eyes, which a wolf would be ashamed to have in the wild, get them reactions, treats, and food. They aren’t actually sad and they may not need anything – they’re just using the tools they have in their repertoire to get the couple of things they like: food and attention.

So then we come to the classic meme where the dog is giving side eye which we interpret to be both cute and sassy. So what does dog side eye mean? It means your dog is using its peripheral vision – that’s sometimes it. Although we can’t actually know exactly what dog’s are thinking since they can’t talk, we can use the context in which the side is given to assist us in understanding what their emotions are.

If my dog is laying on the couch resting and I make a noise, he may crack an eye open and roll his eye to the side to see what I’m doing. Not attitude, not sass. Just seeing what’s going on. If I’m playing with him and he’s heavily stimulated he may start using his peripheral vision to see what move I’m making so he can counter it quickly without having to move his head. If my dog is approaching another intact male dog and he’s using side eye, hackles are raised, and teeth are showing – he’s preparing for a fight. Side eye doesn’t mean anything by itself.

Dogs also generally have their eyes on the side of their head which presents a different field of vision than a human and they are also shorter than humans so where we see side eye as a cultural/behavioral sign of annoyance or attitude, your dog is just trying to see the world around them better.

Conclusion

Ultimately we just have to speculate about the reason for this behvaior but I believe if dogs could talk they would agree with what is outlined above. Katek9petcare.com wrote an article about this which you can read here. I mostly agree. There are some studies cited which is nice but definitely not conclusive on anything since dogs can’t talk.