How to Play Tug of War with Your Dog

Do Dogs Have Emotions?

Experts agree that dogs do experience various states of emotional arousal including things like fear, frustration, anxiety and disappointment.  But problems occur when dog owners assume that their dogs are reacting to these emotions the same way that people do.

This anthropomorphic thinking by owners results in false assumptions about their dogs behavior, attributing purely human responses such as jealousy and spite to their dogs. Although dogs  experience emotional responses they are not burdened by the same type of emotional "baggage" as humans.  

The emotions that dogs experience come from their limbic system, a complex loop of neural structures which play a role in things like fear and aggression. But their thinking and reasoning occurs in the cerebral cortex, not in the limbic system. (Trainers sometimes refer to the difference in these thought processes as "hind brain / front brain.")

When owners assume that dogs think like humans think, all kinds of wrong conclusions are reached.
Some examples:

• Owner brings home a new baby and the dog starts having housebreaking accidents. Owner concludes that the dog is being "spiteful" because she is not getting enough attention, when in fact "spite" has nothing to do with it. The dog's routine of meals and potty breaks has been turned upside down and she simply needs a house training refresher course. 
• Toddler learns to walk and the dog begins growling at him. Owners assume the dog is "jealous" when in fact the dog had never been exposed to young children during her early developmental stages, has been tripped over a couple of times, and is now afraid of this clumsy little odd-moving creature.
• One of two family dogs dies. Six months later, the owner is convinced that the other dog is still depressed.  The owner can certainly relate to that, because the owners misses the other dog too. But the fact is that dogs tend to live in the present moment. The loss of a companion may cause them to feel a bit unsettled for a few days, since one of the pack members is gone, but if the dog is still acting "depressed" months later, it's not because they miss their friend, it's because they have adapted to new patterns of behavior due to their ability to read the body language of the owner, and because their daily routines have been changed.
• An owner surrenders her two German Shepherds to the local shelter. The dogs grew up together and are closely bonded. Because of this, the shelter insists that any new adopter must take both dogs,  because they believe that the dogs will not do well on their own.  Since they grew up together they must stay together or they won't be happy. As a result the dogs spend much longer in the shelter because it's much harder to find an adopter willing to adopt two large dogs. The perception of the humans is that these dogs cannot thrive on their own. But the reality is that even lifelong litter-mates who have been together for many years can be successfully re-homed individually. After only a few days they will learn to settle into their new homes. They won't worry and obsess over whether their pack mate is doing well. Instead they will focus on their new family. They are genetically programmed to find their own place in their new "pack" - not to wish they were reunited with their old one.

Dogs do not think like people; dogs think like dogs. They live in the present and focus on their daily routines and rituals.  They don't carry the same emotional burdens that we do and they don't dwell on the past. They don't hold grudges and they don't get spiteful or jealous. Yes, they feel emotions like anger and happiness, but they don't react to these emotions the same way that we do. In many ways, they are actually much better at handling life's problems than we are. I'm a little jealous of that.