Happy Healthy Pets

Do Dogs Feel Emotions? – A look at Dog Psychology

Animal researchers have been continuously conducting studies to determine if dogs and other animals have emotions and feelings much like humans do.Regular everyday people like you and me could answer that question rather quickly with a resounding “Yes!”

Having grown up on the farm and spending most of my youth around many different farm animals including several different farm dogs, I can say that personally I know that dogs are capable of feeling and expressing several different emotions.

It seems to me that it’s pretty obvious by some of the physical signs dogs display, including how they wag
their tail, how they sound, how they move, and how they interact with other animals and humans.

It is easy to see that a dog gives an enormous amount of information as to what they are feeling on the inside. Researchers typically begin their studies with doubt and skepticism. The researchers start with the questions as to what it would feel like on the inside to be a dog.  Since this is not something that is easily scientifically observed and can’t put under a microscope, so to speak.  The idea of animals or dogs having complex feelings is often quickly dismissed.

Although, as time goes on, many people are beginning to be less skeptical about the idea of dogs having and feeling emotions. In fact, there are several research papers that are considered prestigious publications who have reported such findings that elephants can feel grief, mice have empathy, and rats can experience joy. These studies definitely
make a good argument for those of us who have “known” all along that dogs are perfectly capable of feeling emotions much like humans.

So having said that, Why have emotions evolved in certain species as adaptation tools to their environment? The answer could be in the possibility that these emotions have evolved to become somewhat of a “social sticky” which glues the bond between animals and each other for a variety of social reasons.

Many researchers also concluded that animals which are living as companions to humans, especially dogs, can develop specific emotions due to our relationship with them.  Several common emotional traits between humans and dogs have been identified and this is still more evidence that dogs do indeed feel emotions.

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