In some ways, many of us are like Potter Stewart. He was the Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court who, in the obscenity case of Jacobellis v. Ohio of 1964 wrote that “hard-core pornography” was hard to define, but that “I know it when I see it.”

Admittedly, that’s a twisted segue into the topic of dogs, but like Stewart, we don’t always know the names for some of the things we see in in our dogs, either, but once described, we realized that we’ve witnessed it. Take the “challenge tail.” It’s something we’ve all probably seen, but didn’t know it had a name: One dog is challenging another, and his tail will start to lean wayyyyy forward over his back. When the effrontery is over, the tail returns to its normal position.  That’s a “challenge tail.”  The first time we saw ours, it was demonstrated by a Kerry Blue Terrier.

“Distant Hills” by Steven Nesbitt
http://stevennesbitt.co.uk/index.php