Gorgeous men, gorgeous women, gorgeous dogs, and the clincher, the Collie head tilt. Ralph Lauren’s ad for Polo mastered it.

The “blue” Collie who tilts his head in the Lauren commercial below is “Storm,” a Collie owned by a friend of NPDD, Jessica Baldwin. Two of the others are dogs named “Kane” and “Heather” owned by Heather Circle. To watch the video, ignore the “sorry” message and click on the blue square that reads, “watch on Vimeo,” you’ll be glad you did.

“Collies” Director’s Cut :50 from christina mansi on Vimeo.

One of the cutest things a dog can do is tilt his or her head, and Collies seem to have it coded in their DNA:

 

Scientists don’t really know why a dog tilts his or her head, but there is no shortage of theories, including that we tend to positively reinforce it when our dog does it.  Often, a dog tilting his head back means they want something, and this can include making sure they heard something right. Seriously. If you say, “walkies,” or “let’s go,” a dog will often look up to confirm if he heard right, and that it was directed at him, and not, say, the sofa. And speaking of hearing, some experts think that because dogs are able to triangulate sounds because of the muscles, flexibility, and shape of their ears, they tilt their heads to “fine tune” the direction of the sound. It’s not unlike our cupping our ears to better hear in a crowded venue.

Dogs also tilt their heads to see things better.  Try this experiment: Ball your hand into a fist and put it up to your nose. The lower half of what you’re looking at is blocked out, right?  Researchers think that dogs try to see us better by tilting their heads to move their muzzle out of the way.  It’s pointed out that breeds with longer muzzles (like the Collie) tend to head tilt more frequently than, say, a brachycephalic dog.

But here’s a different perspective (ha, a pun). In a study released in 2021 entitled, “An exploratory analysis of head-tilting in dogs,” researchers studied 40 dogs of various breeds and found that that the group of “gifted word learners”(seven Border Collies) tilted their heads far more frequently than their non-gifted counterparts after hearing a command, and especially when concentrating on tasks or recalling information.  In fact, the “gifted learners” tilted their heads 43% of the time as opposed to the other dogs”tilting” just 2% of the time. Do read the study, it makes for fascinating reading.

Top image of the late great “Flynn,” aka GCH MACH RACH Belfair The Swashbuckler CDX RM3 RAE2 PT MXS MJB OF SCN SIN TKI GV. The photo is shared with the kind permission of Chelsea Bloomberg