The emotions in your dog

Hi and welcome on K9 Woof You, the podcast of K9 Voice. I’m Ingrid, dog behavior consultant, and today I’ll talk about what your dog feels. Dogs are recognized as sentient beings, which means they are able to feel emotions and pain, and, to perceive subjectively certain experiences.

 

Emotions, yes, just like you and I. That said, all of them are not acknowledged in dogs yet.

What about starting with what an emotion really is? When you are facing a situation, you feel something briefly, and your body reacts, we can talk about emotions. Remember this: brief and physiological. Emotions don't linger over. They generate reactions from your body, without you being able to control them. For example? Well, goosebumps, an accelerated heart rate, sweaty palms. As for your dog, he may have fur that stands on end, may pant more than usual, startle, drool, or have dilated pupils.

If what we feel persists over time, we then speak of a feeling. This is where we can establish a difference between fear and anxiety for example.

 

We are certain that dogs experience all of the six primary emotions. Why primary? Because they don't depend on learning, whether cultural or familial, and they don't result from a combination of other emotions.

They are : fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, and surprise.

Each emotion has its own function, its own motivation to be generated.

 

Feeling afraid is salutary. Without fear, we can’t survive. Why? Because we don’t assess the danger we are facing, we overlook it, and we risk being injured or worse. The problem arises if your dog is afraid of many elements in his environment, and moreover if he cannot overcome them.

When a dog is afraid, he can opt for various strategies. Fleeing: he goes in the opposite direction from where what he perceives as a threat is. So, if you are nearby, it may be an effort for him to get closer to you. He may freeze: he becomes like a statue. His muscles are tense. His breathing seems to have stopped. His gaze looks frozen. I saw this in a sheltered dog we were treating for dermatological issues. A tornado would have passed, we would have taken off, but she would have stayed put. She had rooted herself to the table, gazing into oblivion. Your dog may also opt for the motto "Attack is the best defense": even if a dog shows hostile behaviors, even if he looks and sounds fighty, if he means to drive something away, to put it to flight, if his body language shows signs of fear, then it is fear. At a less intense level of fright, he may also choose to pretend to perform a behavior. Visualize your dog with his nose to the ground, but you don't hear that characteristic little sniffing sound, and, more importantly, you see he keeps staring directly toward something you know doesn't make him comfortable. Once this element has passed, your dog resumes his normal life. He may also pretend to urinate, scratch himself, or eat something.

 

Anger is not always expressed through ill-temper. For your dog, just because he doesn't growl or bare his teeth doesn't mean he is not angry. Anger aims at a change in a situation. When I was a teenager, I was told that the head of the middle school I attended believed I was only going on to high school because of a quota policy. This displeased me and boosted me at the same time: I changed his prediction of my future failure into success.

For your dog, this might manifest as opening the bag of kibble after he showed you his bowl and you refused to feed him immediately.

 

It is not just in your dog's body language that you can decipher his emotions, but also, and sometimes above all, in his motivations.

 

Sadness is felt because a need has not been met. Being deprived or not being contented leads to coping with loss. A dog that is separated from his loving beings expresses sadness. A dog that is grieving expresses sadness. Even if your dog is not whining, he can still be sad if he shows lack of motivation for activities he usually enjoys, if he refuses his favorite food, if he’s apathetic, if he keeps his body low during the slightest interaction.

 

On the other hand, joy is felt because a need has been satisfied. It is felt when one is given something, or even the anticipation of being given something. This leads to accepting this gift, sharing it, and creating and/or strengthening social bonds.

If your dog is happy to see you when you come home from work, he waddles, he may pee a few drops, he wags his tail, he cries softly, he brings you his toys, he jumps on you, he licks you. He doesn't stay in his bed and vaguely raises his head; he comes to you. If he is delighted when you take his leash in hand, he comes to you or gets ready eagerly closer to the door, appearing more cooperative. Joy leads to experiencing a moment, an event, with others.

If he is running across a meadow, hopping, bouncing, sniffing, with his mouth open, his muscles relaxed, his movements broad and supple, your dog is lightening his body with the joy he feels.

 

As for disgust, let's get one thing straight right away: we and dogs don't perceive it the same way. Basically, disgust protects us from poisons, whether they are visual, olfactory, or gustatory. The rejection we express toward an element keeps us alive.

The issue is that dogs don't have the same physical abilities as we do. Let's start with taste. We win! They have very limited taste buds. They focus on the texture more than on the taste itself. Visually, they are shortsighted beings and don't perceive colors in the red spectrum. Even if your dog can see movements well, he may have barked at you and stopped at once as he had identified you.

From an olfactory perspective, they are highly sophisticated machines ; and I'm sure we don't know yet the full capabilities of their system. They can predict a diabetic attack with their smell; detect objects that were concealed and removed hours before.

Even so, just like with humans, there will be individual differences: some dogs love to roll in horse manure, others to jump in the mud, others prefer a soft bed. So it's not surprising, but it should still be supervised, when your dog enjoys rubbing his back on fish corpses, or taking human poops in its mouth (yum!).

 

As for surprise, I don’t feel at ease to place it among emotions. For me, it's a pre-emotion, because it very often precedes another. Surprise gets the body ready for what follows when an unexpected event happens. Let's consider an example: you are relaxed, reading while being captivated. I crop up behind you and you startle! Your heart rate has momentarily accelerated, your muscles have contracted, your breathing has been cut off for a brief moment. And that's when you begin to evaluate the situation. Depending on the experience you’re having, what you feel will be positive, neutral, or negative. Let's say I surprise you, right after, I put down a 50 dollar bill; later, I repeat, you startle again, and I put down another 50 dollar bill. Gradually, the emotion you’ll feel after the surprise, unless you have an aversion to 50 dollar bills, should tend to be positive. You should be smiling even before I take the bill in my hand and hand it over. Now let's say I surprise you, and right after I pinch you; later, I repeat, and you startle again, and I pinch you again. Gradually, the emotion you’ll feel after the surprise, unless you are a masochist, should tend to be negative. You should try to avoid me or push me away.

 

Now that we've covered the six primary emotions, is it possible for your dog to experience others? De-fi-ni-tely! While there may be doubts about some, it's certainly possible to attribute other emotions to your dog. It's highly likely, however, that not all of the emotions felt by humans are accessible to them, as they involve a more complex cognitive system.

 

Can your dog feel bored? Yes, I have no doubt about it. Some dogs even compensate for a lack of activity that corresponds to their energy, their need for mental and/or physical exertion, by engaging in undesirable behaviors, such as destruction, barking, apathy, refusal to obey.

 

Can your dog feel interested? Yes, again. A dog that is presented with a new object and then goes to investigate it is a dog that is showing curiosity and has therefore shown interest in that object.

 

Can your dog feel excited? Um... Barking, jumping, increased latency before calming down, zooming around, are some of the behaviors we can observe in an excited dog.

 

Can your dog feel sexual desire? If your dog still has all of his biological material, he may be overcome by the urge to mate. He may also simply enjoy it without seeking to breed; and whether your dog is neutered or spayed, he may also enjoy it. This can appear, for example, through humping, licking his area, erections, or crying to join the individual who left certain scents.

 

Can your dog feel guilty? Well, this question is quite debated, without having a definitive answer so far. To date, what we know for sure is that if your dog reacts by lowering his head, making soft eyes and whale ones, gently wagging his tail while it’s quite low, hiding, avoiding you, it is, for him, a strategy to elude your own reaction. Tests were done during which a sausage was offered to a dog, his owner ordered him to leave it alone, but after leaving, the experimenter prompted the dog to eat it; which upset the owner when he returned because the dog had disobeyed him. In the next exercise, the experimenter pulled the sausage out of the dog’s view; but the dog still showed a prostrate reaction. And yet, in the 2nd exercise he hadn’t disobeyed. What was revealed was that he associated his owner's annoyance with the absence of the sausage and not with the fact he had eaten it. We can see it as well in puppies who are told off when they have defecated and whose owners sometimes react with a 30-second latency only. Puppies consider that a visible poop turns their owner into a hostile being; thus they tend to defecate behind furniture or eat the excrement, even when it is not their own.

 

It's important to keep it in mind that dogs are complex beings. It may be possible to be unable to identify an emotion because it isn't expressed overtly.

A dog may also feel conflicted. I can see that with dogs that are greedy for treats but uncomfortable around humans: they stamp their feet to approach and take the treat while keeping their hind legs as far as possible.

A mix of emotions may also occur: your dog is excited and angry or he feels interest and joy.

I'll also talk about the level of the emotional state. The valence indicates the quality of the emotion: is it positive or negative? The arousal level indicates the quality of the energy deployed by the dog to express this emotion. An apathetic and happy dog will have a positive valence and a low arousal level. An angry and energetic dog will have a negative valence and a high arousal level.

 

As you can feel, emotions in dogs are a world full of feelings, both visible and invisible.