Calming Signal

This is Beat in the car on our way to work this morning. I actually wanted a photo of him watching the road over my shoulder and I took the picture with one hand, unable to see what he did or what I was pointing the camera at. When I got to look at the photos later, I had several to choose from, but I chose this, because it was the most interesting of them. It was the only one with Beat licking his nose.

When dogs lick, it is rarely because something is tasty or they have dry lips. It is almost always what we call a calming signal - a signal the dog uses to calm the surrounding if they are a bit too overwhelming or frightening.

Many dogs do it when you point a camera at them, because they find it overwhelming and scary to have a big black eye staring directly at them, so they try to tell the camera in a polite way, that it feels uncomfortable so please back off and keep a proper distance.

Next step would be to growl as growling is what is called a 'distance creating signal'. Most times growling is not really aggressive behaviour, but a sign of insecurity and a need to create distance to whatever it is that is threatening.
It is not likely that Beat would growl at the camera though as 1) he did not consider it threatening enough and 2) he could create distance by walking away from it (which was what he did), so he did not feel pressured enough.

Other calming signals could be to lift a paw, turn the head away or to yawn.

You can learn more by watching this video. It is very interesting.