I recently came across this touching article about a dog whose owner was lost at sea and who stays at the beach, looking out over the ocean, waiting for a return that will never occur. I found the article poignant, and it got me wondering about what that dog really understood or felt. More generally, I wondered then, and I still wonder about how dogs feel or experience emotions. And what about their emotions directed at us: do dogs love us the way that we love them?
I’m not a philosopher, and I’m not a vet, nor a vet psychologist (see here for more information on that). But I am a dog owner, and I can say that it honestly feels to me like our dogs feel things. Even if dogs don’t experience emotions the way that we experience them, it does seem like they do experience emotions in some way with genuine affection to us. Think about your own dog:
· The way she greets you when you come home from work, or even more so when you’ve been away on vacation for a week!
· The way he tries to make himself small in a corner with lowered ears when he knocks over the trash.
· The way he hides in the bathtub when there’s thunder.
· The way she sits at your feet while you work.
· The way she leaps and wags her tongue (and her whole body) when you say, “Do you want to go on a walk?”
The affection and expressiveness our dogs have toward us is unmistakable. To be sure, there are likely biological and/or evolutionary factors accounting for our dog’s demonstrations of affection. This article discusses some reasons for dogs’ loyalty to us. According to the article, dogs are loyal to us, in part because we give them food. That makes sense. But there is a curious way in which the article explains that phenomenon. The authors write, “Your dog is grateful to you for the essentials of life that you provide and so is loyal to you.” I agree with the authors, but what’s curious is that the explanation is grounded in the dog’s gratitude – an attitude that not only involves apprehension of the source of the food, but also a sense of what an appropriate response would be toward the food-giver – in this case, the owner – one of thankfulness. That seems very human to me.
The article probes that idea further by relating information about an experiment where the subject dogs watched their owners be ill-treated by a stranger. When the dog was permitted to interact with the stranger, the dog actively snubbed the stranger. Other studies have confirmed that human emotions are contagious to dogs. See, for example, this study. Our stress and excitement seem to rub off on them.
We experience this every day with our dogs, don’t we? It’s uncanny the ways in which they mirror our affect and disposition. They sense our love to them and reciprocate. I don’t think it’s likely that the dog is reflective on his or her own love to us. In other words, they probably don’t think “I really love this human.” But it seems to me they do feel love or something like it to us.
Either way, isn’t it a great privilege to love on and be loved by these wonderful creatures?
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