You’ve seen it before. Especially when your dog is younger. Your dog cocks its head to the side, and it’s the cutest thing ever. But why do they do that? This is the head tilt demystified.

Dogs have a sense of hearing that’s way better than humans and they detect and hear frequencies and sounds that we absolutely can’t. But for us humans, we can hear sounds no matter where they originated from, whereas a dog's sense of hearing is limited to more streamlined directions. So whilst we don’t have to turn our heads when we hear something, dogs tend to pivot to hear these sounds better. For some dogs with floppy ears, their ear canal has a physical barrier, so they need to change their position to hear a particular sound better. For dogs where their ears don’t flop, their barrier limits sound from the rear, imagine cupping the back of your ears, which gives you a better sense of their hearing.

So really, the true reason for your dog tilting its head or cocking its head to the side is to eradicate the interference and perk up to receive the sounds to hear it more clearly. Usually, the tilt is more towards the origin of the sound or if the origin is within range, it is adjusting its ears to hear it better. This also allows for a dog to assess the location and distance of the sound. Other times, it’s another way for your dog to show you that they are fully paying attention to what you have to say. It’s their way of nodding to show that they are concentrating and picking up the intricacies of every word you’re saying. Positive reinforcement when prolonged can induce your dog to do this more often, as your dog would be trained to do so.

While we find it cute when they do that, it is also good to note that they would do it with sounds they are completely unfamiliar with. They may not repeat the head tilt action if it is a sound they’ve heard before or if they are used to the sound. This also means that as we expose our dogs to sounds around them, the more they are exposed, the less the chance of snapping that pic of our dog cocking their heads.

You might have seen on TikTok several videos that have sounds that would trigger a head tilt from your dog. Here are a few we’ve done: