Canine Emotions

Do dogs love? Can they feel shame? Jealousy? Pride?

A brief Intro to Dogs and Emotions

The majority of people who own a dog can easily read their emotions. At least that’s what they believe.

For Example
You come home after a long day at work to be greeted by your dog wagging its tail, jumping around and giving you lots of licks. You might think, “Luna is happy to see me, she loves me”. You might also take Luna out for a walk and another dog runs over to you. Your dog freezes, her hackles go up and she starts to growl. In this situation, you might assume “Luna isn’t happy to see this dog. She is angry”.

It is all too easy for humans to attach emotions to the actions we see in our dogs, just because we are so emotional ourselves. The thing that needs to be considered, is how many of our emotions exist within dogs.

Years ago, it was considered that dogs had an almost academic intelligence level and that their emotional capacity was nearly identical to humans. It was thought that they could understand our language, in just the same way that we can understand other humans. We have since discovered that this is not completely true. When compared to other animals however, dogs are more intelligent than most other mammals, they do not have the same level of intelligence, either mental or emotional, that we do.

Understanding What Dogs Feel

To get a better understanding of what dogs feel, we can look at the research that has been done on human emotions.
 
Not all humans develop a full range of emotions. Those who do, will not develop all of these emotions until adulthood. There is a significant amount of research showing us that infants have a limited range of emotions. In most, but not all, these develop over time.

Why is this important?

Because the studies we have applied to humans can help us understand the emotions of a dog. Scientists have found that the mind of a dog is equivalent to that of a two year old child. This tells us that the emotions of a toddler and those of a dog are very similar. A two year old child and a dog can feel the same emotions.

When we are first born, our primary emotion is excitement. When a baby is not feeling excitement, they might be calm, but when feeling a lot of excitement, the baby will become very animated. After the first couple of weeks of a baby's life, the excitement begins to take on a positive or negative directions. This is how we can detect either a content emotion or a discontent emotion. Over the following months, the baby will start showing emotions such as fear, disgust and anger. Joy is also an emotion that we see appear at around six months of age and is soon followed by suspicion and shyness. Real and true affection does not emerge until the child is around nine to ten months old.

Complex social emotions, such as pride or shame, do not appear until the child is about three years old. Guilt and contempt do not appear until the child is nearly four years old.

Understanding canine emotions

Having an understanding of this development in humans is import for us to have a better understanding of canine emotions. Dogs learn and experience emotions much quicker than humans. They will have developed their full range of emotions by about six months of age. By this time, they will only have an emotional capacity that is equivalent to a two year old. So, what emotions do dogs feel?

They can feel the following:

• Anger
• Fear
• Excitement
• Distress
• Disgust
• Contentment
• Joy
• Suspicion
• Love

Dogs do not feel complex emotions, such as pride, guilt and shame. Most dog owners will be in agreement about pride or shame, but many believe that their dog can feel guilt. This does make sense, but it is untrue. Imagine that you have just come home and your dog is acting quite shy and you interpret it as guilt. You then notice the TV remote in the corner, all chewed up.

It is completely normal for an owner to think that the dog is feeling guilty about chewing up the remote, but this is not the case. What the owner is looking at is a combination of fear, and a developed behaviour designed to calm us down.

The dog is aware that it should not chew on things and that when we notice it, something bad thing will happen, such as being shouted at. What you are seeing is straight forward, a dog afraid of the punishment coming its way, not a guilty dog.

Dogs are beloved companions and owners all too often turn to their dogs when they feel stressed or emotional. Dogs seemingly have the power to understand and comfort us during difficult times.

Dogs are capable of feeling a wide range of emotion which is why they are often used in a therapy capacity. Canines are increasingly used in mental and emotional health support programmes for their ability to offer support when humans need it most. It is important to remember that in the most part, dogs are professionally trained to fulfil this need for us.

Interesting fact:

In the UK, “PAT” or Pets as Therapy programme has over 5,000 PAT dogs that are used to interact with over 130,000 people every week. 
Sigmund Freud, the well known scientist and founder of psychoanalysis, is also known as the accidental pioneer of canine-assisted therapy due to his observation that his patients were more comfortable when his pet Chow Chow, Jofi, was present.
When we stroke our dog, there is a release of Oxytocin which also makes your dog feel happy. Similarly, dogs in stressful situations show a rise in the levels of cortisol which is a stress hormone. Studies have shown that being left alone at home releases cortisol in dogs as they are naturally social animals and need company.

Dogs are very good at understanding and reading human beings but unfortunately, we are not as capable of understanding them. Canines cannot distinguish between right and wrong without training and they base their emotional responses on past situations and associations.

Is There Science Behind Specific Canine Emotions?

In order for dog owners to gain a better understanding of canine emotions, it can help to look at the research and science behind the claims and results in studies of these emotions.

Laughter

Do you believe that your dog laughs? You might have heard your dog panting whilst playing and thought that it sounded quite like a little chuckle. You might actually be correct! A researcher from Sierra Nevada College in the U.S., Patricia Simonet, has discovered that when dogs make certain breaths, called “excited exhalations', that this is a form of laughter.

Her team brought a special microphone to a park and whilst standing at a distance, recorded the sound of dogs at play. The team discovered that the noises they made were very different from the way a dog normally pants. Later, they played the sounds to other dogs, which then began playing. They also found that the sounds helped to ease stress in dogs. I have to confess, that I was slightly sceptical about this until I tried it on my own dogs. Two of the three did actually start to play when they heard it.

Jealousy

Friederike Range, who is a canine researcher from the University of Vienna, did research study on dogs that led her to believe dogs have a sense of 'fairness'. Friederike and her team began by looking at a group of dogs that were aware of the command for 'shake'. The team would ask the dogs to shake, and some dogs were given a treat. When the dogs that did not receive the treat saw that the other dogs were getting a treat, they stopped performing the actions. This gave a clear indication that the dogs were jealous they were not treated as fairly as the others.

Grief

Dogs do not grieve the same way as humans. They definitely experience sadness when they experience a loss, such as when another dog, or human in the family passes away. Some of the ways that dogs show grief include fear, loss of appetite, anxiety, low mood and sleeping more or less than usual.

Joy

If you watch a dog playing, you can see first-hand that a dog can experience joy. Charles Darwin wrote about the play of dogs and how they “'bark for joy”, when playing. Playing helps a dog to build a social bond with others, including humans. This is how they learn to trust and how to cooperate. Play also helps dogs to develop and enhance their cognitive abilities.

Scientific studies are not only proving that dogs have feelings, but they are finding that canine emotions are more complex than we thought.

When working with owners and dogs myself, a huge part of what I do is pinpointing a dogs emotional state and triggers in order for me to give owners a clear understanding of the root causes leading to the unwanted behaviours their dog is exhibiting.

By understanding the cause, it means that the chances of success and longevity are considerably higher, because owners are able to address the dog on a level that it understands on its own level, rather than trying to condition through man made constructs, such as basic obedience. This way, unwanted self-taught behaviours can be un-taught by the dog its self, simply by making adjustments to the environment, or how we interact with our dog day to day.

Azz Rainey has spent many years studying the methods of communication between dogs and humans. If you are unsure of what it is your own dog is trying to say to you, get in touch to book a one-to-one consultation.
Sessions are available in Oxfordshire, Gloucester, Swindon and the surrounding areas