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Last Updated on March 25, 2024 by Thee Puppypreneur
WHAT DOES DOG LIP LICKING MEAN IN DOGS
If your dog licks its lips a lot this could mean several different things. Depending on when your dog is lip licking or how often your dog is lip licking. Their body language can actually tell you a lot about how your furbaby is feeling.
POSSIBLE REASONS YOUR DOG KEEPS LICKING HIS LIPS
Some possible reasons your dog keeps licking its lips could be;
FOOD
If your dog is smacking its lips and drooling, this happens while they are in the presence of food then they are telling you that they are hungry or they are awaiting whatever is being prepared.
Another reason could be something similar to Pavlov’s dog study which proved that dogs could be conditioned to illicit a particular response.
So basically, he noticed dogs would salivate whenever they saw a lab assistant whether there was food or not because the dogs associated the lab assistants with getting fed. So, then he decided to change the dog’s response to associate a sound with being fed.
What I am trying to get at is maybe something you are doing that you might not be aware of entirely gives your furbaby the impression that they might receive a treat or food of some kind.
ILLNESS
Does your dog lick its lips constantly? This might also suggest that they are not feeling well. I have been through this with my dogs before. I noticed that the dog would wake up in the middle of the night and be air licking a lot of licking its chops a lot.
She has food allergies, I did not know she was allergic to grains in the beginning and she started air licking to tell me that her stomach wasn’t feeling well, then she threw up the barely I had fed her.
Your reason could be different then allergies of course and could signify digestive upset or discomfort for another reason such as gastrointestinal issues like IBD or gas.
INFECTION
Uh! Yes, this happened too. On a separate occasion, I noticed she was always licking her face and I was like “omg, I removed the grains, now what!”
Then I decided to take a closer look at her face. The reason for the dog licking lips this time was scabs and pyoderma on the folds of her lips and jowls. For those of you that don’t know what pyoderma is, it is a skin infection that typically dogs with folds in their skin like shar-peis and bulldogs are more prone to getting.
She doesn’t usually have any folds in her jowls but she was swollen and there was pus and blood but you had to look very closely. She is all better now, fyi.
So, that issue was on the side of her lips and that was from home cooked food as the wet food can tend to get stuck on the fur around the face.
Another time, (sigh) I had another issue where all of a sudden, I was like this dog licks its lips a lot and then I found a spot of blood on one of the toys.
I then proceeded to check the gums and teeth and inside of the mouth I found a lump growing, behind the front teeth where you couldn’t readily see, and that I have already had removed.
So there you can see there are several different underlying reasons for your fog licking lips constantly. It could be air licking or it could be lip smacking in dogs. Whatever the reason you want to note how often, when and make a thorough inspection of your dog’s mouth.
I use this when inspecting the mouth and face, since the scabs and pus on the lips were hard to see through the hairs and the swelling almost didn’t look like swelling to me until I checked both sides and saw one side was puffier from constant scratching.
ANXIETY
This is another big reason for dog air licking. Communication through body language can signal a variety of things to the human owner. 1Mota-Rojas D, Marcet-Rius M, Ogi A, Hernández-Ávalos I, Mariti C, Martínez-Burnes J, Mora-Medina P, Casas A, Domínguez A, Reyes B, Gazzano A. Current Advances in Assessment of Dog’s Emotions, Facial Expressions, and Their Use for Clinical Recognition of Pain. Animals (Basel). 2021 Nov 22;11(11):3334. doi: 10.3390/ani11113334. PMID: 34828066; PMCID: PMC8614696. Current Advances in Assessment of Dog’s Emotions, Facial Expressions, and Their Use for Clinical Recognition of Pain – PMC (nih.gov)
Anxiety for whatever reason whether it be people, thunder, umbrellas and yes, I even knew someone whose dog air licking was out of control whenever they came across a shiny floor.
We literally would stop at the entrance to the pet store and the dog lip licking would start like crazy and he would refuse to move onto the shiny white floor and we had to put him in the shopping cart.
So if your dog has anxiety, there are natural supplements out there such as
which contains valerian root which is often referred to as “nature’s valium” and ashwagandha which is an adaptogenic herb which helps the body cope with stress.
Or another option is
You should always consult your veterinarian before starting anything new in your furbaby’s life and these do contain herbs and herbs can interfere with certain medications and medical conditions your dog may have whether the condition is known or not known.
Point being is that there are so many different reasons for the air licking or lip licking and you need to address the issue.
If you are interested in learning more interesting things about your furbaby then check out our other article
