Can Dogs Sense Our Emotions?
by: Dr. Nicholas Dodman




Your dog might sense that something is wrong.

All dog owners like to think that their pet can sense their mood and emotions. Although researchers now accept that dogs, and other non-human animals, can experience primary emotions such as anxiety, fear, and anger, they do not accept that “animals�?are capable of more sophisticated, secondary thought and emotion. Accordingly, they believe that non-human animals are incapable of projecting the feelings of others around them, because without an appreciation of self, secondary emotions, like jealousy (he’s enjoying something that I would enjoy more) and empathy (oh, what a terrible situation that person/other dog is in) are impossible.

This is a complicated argument, and we don’t have to review it all here, but suffice to say, not everyone agrees that dogs, or even animals in general, would be able to assess the mood or feelings of another animal. As sympathetic as I am to the difficulties of scientifically proving self-awareness and secondary emotions in animals, I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are sensitive creatures with feelings and emotions that reach beyond the blatantly obvious.

Examples of Dogs Sensing our Emotions


Almost every dog owner has found out that when they are really sad, their dog acts differently toward them. He may approach with a concerned look and, quite out of character, hunker down next to them, presumably to provide some support. It is as if they are saying, I know there’s something wrong, I don’t know what but I’m here for you anyway. Are there other explanations? Of course, there are, but none make as much sense. You could argue that the dog observes your posture and appearance as submissive and, almost reflexively, approaches to investigate or even capitalize on the new situation.


Fear-aggressive dogs are more often aggressive to people who fear them. By observation, they pick up from a person’s demeanor that they are not comfortable and capitalize on their weakness. Perhaps it is because the person has a pained expression; perhaps because the person is a little tenuous; or perhaps the dog reads fear from the large diameter of the person’s pupils. For whatever reason, under-confident dogs “know�?when a person is afraid of them and will move forward on them, perhaps to attack.


Top trainer William (Bill) Campbell is well-known for his “jolly routine�?approach to treating fear in dogs. Most people think that this involves being jolly with your dog, but actually that’s not so. The real jolly routine means that all the people in the house should behave in a happy, jolly manner with each other. The dog, sensing their apparent happiness, figures out that nothing bad is going to happen and relaxes. The fact that the technique works is testimony to the fact that dogs are influenced by our emotions and behavior. When we’re “up,�?they’re “up.�?BR>

Many dogs slink away and hide or sulk when their human “parents�?argue. A major league fight between adults really seems to take its toll on some dogs. The appearance of the dog’s behavior is as if he understands discord and does not want to be around it. Of course, it can be argued that raised voices might drive the dog away for his own protection but I have heard of dogs that sulk even when their owners purposely keep their voices low. It’s as if you can’t hide anything from a dog.


If an owner comes home and finds their home trashed by their dog, the guilty party will often be found hiding, perhaps with a hangdog look. Owners believe their dog is feeling guilty about what he has done. If you accept the guilt explanation, you must also accept that the dog is projecting your feelings of disappointment or anger. Hard line behaviorists naturally would disagree with this interpretation, preferring to believe that the dog simply associates his owner, the damage, and his own presence with past punishment and acts submissively. This would be all fair and well, but I know dogs that have never been punished who still act in this way. Sure, their owners may have been disappointed and disheartened by the damage, but that’s about it. The dogs must have read this disappointment because they sure weren’t responding to punishment of any form.


Some naughty dogs do not appreciate their owners hugging or kissing each other. They seem to know that the people concerned are experiencing some pleasure and they want to be part of it. So, they try to leverage themselves into the situation by shoving, pushing, pawing, and jumping. This behavior sure looks like jealousy but many mainstream behaviorists disagree, preferring explanations like possessiveness or conflict-induced behavior, because the dog “cannot predict what will happen next.�?BR>
Conclusion

Examples of dogs seemingly picking up on our emotions are endless but still the scientific proof is not there. I suppose it would be very difficult for some folks to accept that dogs, or any animals, might have minds that work in similar ways to our own. I suppose us believers still have a long way to go to convince the skeptics.

The case against animals having the ability to glean our mood and mindset is based on lack of evidence to the effect that it happens rather than conclusive evidence to the contrary. But the times are a changin.�?In one primate experiment, Harvard researchers trained a monkey to lower a basket of fruit down from a pulley in the ceiling. When they stopped putting fruit in the basket, the monkey stopped lowering the basket. When another monkey was suspended in the basket and screamed blue murder, the trained monkey lowered him to the ground. The action appears to reflect empathy though the researchers are still working on other possible explanations.

With the wider acceptance of self-awareness, and more complicated emotions like jealousy, guilt, and empathy, we’ll be in a better position to have authorities accept what pet owners know already; that their dogs know their every mood and are often the first to appreciate a change. From an evolutionary point of view, it would be very strange if dogs did not have the ability to sense mood and that it suddenly occurred for the first and only time in the human animal. It would also not make sense to have a pack animal like a dog not realize when he was getting into trouble with another dog or when his behavior was having the desired effect. If dogs feel what we feel, then they would be happy when we're happy, sad when we're sad, and on the lookout (or hiding) when we're angry. All of the above appears to hold true.