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Lea Thompson
Instructor: Malcolm Campbell
UWRT 1103
06 December 2016
Canine Connections: The Emotional Depths of Dog and Human Relationships
Back when I was learning to ride a bike, my family had a German Shepherd named
Bruto. One night, I decided that I was determined to successfully ride my bike down the
driveway and back again without help. With my family and our faithful pup Bruto watching, I
took off down the hill. As the wind blew back my hair, I realized halfway down the hill that I had
forgotten how to put on brakes. Immediately, paralyzed by fear of what was to come, I lost
control of the bike and ended up face down in the grass. I could hear my parents feet slapping
the sidewalk as they ran down to my rescue, but as I looked up, flying towards my limp body
was none other than Bruto, my dog. Once he reached me, Brutos long tongue began lapping the
tears off my face as I cried. It was as if Bruto was telling me that he recognized my pain and
longed to make it better. Since that moment, I have pondered the emotional capability of canines
and whether they are able to sense emotions and react to them as humans would. The popular
saying states with certainty: dog is mans best friend, but Im curious to discover just how true
that statement is, in terms of emotional connection and relationship.
It is a common belief amongst canine lovers that a dogs emotional state can be
determined by the position of its tail. Many people recognize a dogs wagging tail as happiness,
excitement or friendliness and a tail tucked under as fear. According to Joseph Castro of
livescience.com, dogs wag their tails in order to communicate. In 2007, researchers discovered

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that the positioning of a dogs tail can also indicate their emotional state. If the dogs tail wags to
the right, it is associated with positive emotions but if it wags to the left, it is associated with
negative emotions. This information was gathered from the American Society for the prevention
of cruelty to animals, based on the right and left hemispheres of the brain because the left
hemisphere controls the right side of the body and vise versa. The left hemisphere of the brain is
associated with positive feelings or welcome to approach and the right hemisphere is associated
with negative feelings or reason to avoid. Researchers say that dogs are able to understand the
language of tail wagging in other dogs, however, this doesnt help us humans understand the
emotional state of our cuddly companions or whether they can recognize our feelings.
The topic of dogs emotional depths has created controversy over the years and the debate
can be dated back to the 1600s during the time of French philosopher, mathematician and
scientist, Ren Descartes. Much of the scientific research during the time of Descartes was
sponsored by school or universities affiliated with the church. Therefore, researchers of this topic
were less likely to acknowledge or believe in the existence of emotions in animals because it
would suggest that dogs had souls and would cause problems with the church doctrine. Descartes
was so determined to prove that dogs didnt have souls that he would perform vivisections or live
dissections on animals for the purpose of an experiment or research. Since Descartes believed
that dogs didnt have souls and that the soul is where consciousness originates from, he believed
that it was completely acceptable to cut dogs open just to experiment on them. According to
some biographers, Descartes first vivisection was an attempt to discover if dogs had souls and
his very first victim was his own wifes dog. Modern Dog Magazine refers to the work of
Descartes in an article where Descartes suggested that Dogs are simply some kind of machine.
Later, Nicholas de Malebranche, a French philosopher and Oratory of Jesus, extended Descartes

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ideas by summing things up when he said, Animals eat without pleasure, cry without pain, act
without knowing: they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing. These philosophers ideas
have been challenged by many who observe their dogs feeling threatened, frightened or angered
by a challenge and how could you not? Humans feel pain when our dogs feel pain, feel
threatened when our dogs do and feel happy when our pups are, it is only right that the feelings
are mutual! To refute the argument, the philosophers insist that any dog that reacts in what seems
to be an emotional way is simply reacting but not feeling based on the ways they have learned to
react. Descartes and Malebranche believe that just like any machine, dogs are programmed to
handle certain things and programmed to react in certain ways according to the situation and
that this is all based upon their experience with human interaction. This observation brings up a
curious point that makes me wonderarent we all, in some way or the other, programmed by
life experiences? At a young age, human babies are not going to understand or react accurately
to a scolding just as a young puppy wouldnt. Once a child or puppy is taught and can
comprehend ways of communication, he is able to react properly. If you consider it, not a single
one of us on Earth would be offended by harsh words or yelling if someone hadnt taught us that
harsh words and yelling communicates anger or fury. Therefore, it seems that Descartes and
Malebranches theories are, without acknowledgement, saying the same of humans in their belief
that dogs act as programmed machines. However, after referring to the ideas of philosophers that
lived centuries ago, Modern Dog Magazine then recognizes the advancements in technology
since that time by introducing new research concerning the topic.
Thanks to modern science, we now understand that dogs possess all the same brain
structures that humans do and even undergo the same, or similar, chemical changes that occur
during certain emotional states. According to Lori Garrett-Hatfield, a doctor in the field of adult

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education, humans and canines share 84 percent of their DNA. Oxytocin, or the love hormone,
is a hormone that both canines and humans possess that is associated with the ability to feel love
and affection towards others. This hormone is also commonly known as the cuddle hormone, a
factor that could explain and be the reason for dogs and their owners lasting relationships. In
humans, oxytocin is known for helping mother and baby bond and as a chemical in the brain that
allows people to comprehend emotions. According to Mark Prigg of Daily Mail Online, just
three minutes of petting and talking to a dog raises not only the dogs oxytocin levels, but also
the humans. With that being said, this is not necessarily proof that the emotional ranges of dogs
and humans are equivalent. Research has been done to explore the emotions of humans and
different levels of emotional development in correlation to age and maturity. As a baby, only a
basic level of emotions is active and with time, the mind develops along with emotional
awareness. Today, scientists have compared canines emotional capability and mindfulness to
that of a two-year-old human, able to experience emotions like joy, fear, and anger, but not
emotions such as guilt, pride and shame. The fact that dogs are unable to experience shame is
interesting however, especially when humorous pictures of dogs looking quite shameful after
tearing into a trash can or doing their business inside are all over the internet.
Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist, professor of psychiatry, and a dog lover, became
increasingly curious as to what makes for a strong dog-human relationship, and decided to
pursue his interests by developing an experiment to test first on his own dog. Dogs Are People,
Too, an article from the New York Times, focuses on the information gathered from Berns
experiment. The experiment depended upon an MRI scanner to measure his dog Callies brain
response to two hand signals. The MRI functions by taking pictures of the brain and highlights
the areas that light up when activated. Berns was hopeful that the different hand signals would

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activate parts of the brain that he could easily view from the MRI that would provide the answers
Berns was searching for. First, Berns used a hand signal that signified a treat was being offered,
and another one that signified the opposite. From the results gathered from Callie and a dozen
other MRI certified dogs, Berns and his colleagues noticed striking similarity between dogs
and humans in both structure and function of a specific region
of the brain, the caudate nucleus. In humans, the caudate
nucleus deciphers things we enjoy, like love, food and money.
The caudate nucleus is located between the brainstem and the
cortex and sometimes caudate activation is so consistent that it can predict which food, music
and beauty we prefer. For dogs, the activity of the caudate nucleus increased in response to hand
signals, indicating food or a treat, and was also activated by the scent of their owners or familiar
humans. In preliminary tests, the caudate nucleus reacted to the return of an owner who left
momentarily. Neuroscientists call this a functional homology which may indicate that canines do
in fact, have emotions. Functional homology is used often in the context of biology, meaning the
existence of shared ancestry between a pair of structures or genes in different species. This
discovery supports the previously mentioned hypothesis that the ability to experience emotions
like love and attachment that a dog has is similar to, or on the same level as that of a human
child. This comparison makes me to think back to my memory of Bruto and what seemed like a
passionate effort to console what he recognized as an upset child. If human toddlers have the
ability to recognize negative emotions and react with a similar or equal emotion, I like to think
that my dog did too and he wasnt just licking my tears because they tasted salty.
A similar experiment was conducted by psychologists from the University of Lincoln
using 17 domestic dogs without any prior training and visual sensory. In this experiment, dogs

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were shown multiple pictures while listening to an audio recording, and based on the tone, the
canines tended to look at the picture of the facial expression that best matched it. Not only were
these 17 dogs shown pictures of humans with a variety of facial expressions, they were also
shown images of other dogs, some with a pleasant expression and others snarling and looking
aggressive (see right). In some cases, researchers found that dogs tended to react more intensely
to the images of other canines, while also reacting to that of humans as well. Researcher Kun
Guo from the University of Lincolns School of Psychology says, Previous studies have
indicated that dogs can differentiate between human emotions from cues such as facial
expressions, but this is not the same as emotional recognition.. Guos co-author, Professor
Daniel Mills from the School of Life Science at the University of Lincoln, also says, It has been
a long-standing debate whether dogs can recognize human emotions. Many dog owners report
anecdotally that their pets seem highly sensitive to the moods of family members. However,
there is an important difference between associative behavior and recognizing a range of very
different cues that go together to indicate emotional arousing in another.. In other words, like
previously mentioned philosophers, Mills believes that dogs reactions arent based on their
feelings or any emotional capabilities. Instead, Mills tends to believe that the dogs are
programmed or are similar to actors in a play that simply follow emotional cues. The ideas of
Guo and Mills are sort of parallel to that of Descartes and Malebranche where they understand
and acknowledge the other side of the topic, however, tend to believe that the way dogs react or
process emotions depends more on cues or programmed settings than genuine emotions.
Philosophers and researchers like Descartes, Malebranche, Guo and Mills have similar
ideas that focus on the evolution or experience with human interaction that dogs have endured
over centuries. According to an article by Tia Ghose from livescience.com, Dogs are more than

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mans best friend: they may be partners in humans evolutionary journey.. The discovery of an
ancient, dog-like skull uncovered in the Siberian Mountains suggests that dogs spilt from gray
wolves around 33,000 years ago, however, this isnt perfectly clear or accurate. Other studies,
including genetic analysis, suggests that wolves were tamed and deemed mans best friend
around 16,000 years ago. Genetics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Studies, Guo-dong
Wang, compared corresponding genes found in humans and canines. They discovered that dogs
and humans underwent very similar changes in genes responsible for digestion and metabolism.
More importantly, they discovered a co-evolution in the brain processes that affect the chemical
serotonin which, in humans, effect levels of aggression. Another similarity that canines and their
owners share is the ability to store memories. According to Eva Botkin-Kowacki, dogs have been
known to commit things to semantic memory such as learned tricks like sit, stay, and lie down.
Semantic memory is a portion of long term memories that do not originate from personal
experience. Scientists have long thought that only humans are capable of experiencing episodic
memory or memories of a particular event that happened at a specific time and place, but there
has been recent evidence that suggests that dogs can too! This was tested by Dr. Fugazza, an
ethologist from Etvs Lornd University in Hungary by asking dogs to replicate a random
action performed previously by their owners. The dogs selected for the experiment were trained
in imitation behavior prior to the test, however, this didnt necessarily effect any results because
direct imitation wouldnt reveal whether dogs were capable of episodic memories. Instead, the
imitation was designed to be random so that the dogs couldnt commit action to semantic
memory. The dogs were told to lie down while their owners performed an action such as
touching an umbrella. In order to gather a variety of results, two intervals were utilized. For the
first interval, one minute passed after the owner completed the action before the command Do

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it was to be told to the canine. Then, one hour after the action was completed the Do it
command was given again. The results were reasonable and demonstrated that, like humans, the
more time that had elapsed, the worst the canines memory seemed to be. However, the dogs still
seemed to recall the action and mimic their owners by touching the umbrella. Dr. Fugazza was
pleased with the results and said, I think it makes sense because the dogs did not know they
were supposed to remember this information, so they may forget it sooner.. Episodic memory is
said to be linked to self-awareness, so, if dogs are aware of their surroundings, their feelings and
what they are doing, they can store away memories they have with their owners that enhance a
possible emotional bond with their owners. This information creates another question: Is the
human and canine relationship so prominent and seemingly strong due to their commonalities in
brain and body functions or do dogs genuinely recognize and sympathize with humans
emotions? Because humans and canines have been surrounded by the same environment for
years upon years, some might argue that not only did humans played a huge roll in the
domestication of dogs, but also that dogs played a huge roll in the domestication of humans.
Canines that live in a family environment, surrounded by humans and the connection that is
associated with family have domesticated into gentle, dependent and loyal species. Due to their
dependency, loyalty and innocence, we as humans have domesticated into caring, faithful and
loving species, in order to treat a beloved pet as family. This parallel and codependent evolution
between dogs and humans might explain why dogs are known as mans best friend.
Over a span of eighteen years, I have come in close contact with many dogs and even felt
the presence of a strong emotional connection or bond between the two of us. Whether Im
considering the reaction of my German Shepherd, Bruto, after a dramatic crash on my bike or my
current dog, a Yorkshire Terrier named Sammy snuggling up next to me as I cry over the loss of

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my grandmother, Ive had reason to ponder the emotional capability of canines and the depths
our canine and human relationships. Although there is no definite answer concerning how
emotionally connected humans and dogs really are, there are substantial amounts of research that
support just why people and dogs share such an emotional bond- they are truly mans best friend.

Works Cited
Berns, Gregory. Dogs Are People, Too. Www.nytimes.com. New York Times. 5 Oct. 2013.
Web.17 Oct. 2016.
Castro, Joseph. Why Do Dogs Wag Their Tails? Live Science. Live Science. 28 April. 2014.
Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

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Coren, Stanley. Which Emotions Do Dogs Actually Experience? Modern Dog Magazine.
Modern Dog Magazine. n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.
Garrett-Hatfield, Lori. Animals That Share Human DNA Sequences. Education Seattle PI.
Hearst Seattle Media, n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.
Ghose, Tia. Dogs and Humans Evolved Together, Study Suggests. Live Science. Live Science.
13 May. 2013. Web, 7 Nov. 2016.
Huber, Ludwig. How Dogs Perceive And Understand Us. Current Directions In Psychological
Science 25.5 (2016): 339-344. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Oct 2016.
Morris M. Descartes Dissected His Wifes Dog. Knowledge Nuts. Jamie Frater, 29 Sept. 2013.
Web. 04 Dec. 2016.
Prigg, Mark. The cuddle Hormone That Could Reveal If Your Dog Really DOES Love You.
Daily Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 17 Mar. 2015. Web. 05 Dec. 2016.
University of Lincoln. A Mans Best Friend. 2016. Science Daily, Science Daily