No wonder they are man’s best friend. I wonder what the experiment would result in if it were run with other animals such as cats and horses. I bet that dogs would be found to be the most responsive.
All dogs go to heaven.
Great post with which to start off the day.
I love this picture. Looks so much like my beautiful Riley.
“Dr. Deborah Custance and Jennifer Mayer, both of the Department of Psychology at the University of London, developed a procedure to examine whether domestic dogs could identify and respond to emotional states in humans. “
Seems like we’ve known the answer to this for...I don’t know...thousands of years?
The more I know about people...the more I love animals.
Dogs respond to crying, but not to talking?
Sounds like the old husband stereotype.
But we already knew that. ...man’s best friend and all.
Just proved what many people knew all along :)
Client was embarrassed. I knew the dog was trying to help heal me.
Both the dog and me are still okay.
Of course they do. Dogs are very emotional creatures. They don’t have a whole hell of a lot of executive control, i.e. reasoning ability (though they do very well with what they do have), but their emotional empathy skills are top-notch. I believe you’d find that cats respond too, though their comforting skills are not as well developed as dogs.
Dogs have enormous empathy. When my mom was dying (my parents lived with us in their later years), one of my dogs laid beside her on the bed constantly the last few weeks of her life. He only left to “do his business” and eat. When Mom died, Willy kept putting his head under her hand trying to make her pet him. It was so terribly sad, but also moving.
After Mom died, Willy and his sister sat in the recliner with my dad all day long...one on each side of him so he could pet each of them at the same time!
When my husband died, those same dogs stayed beside me all the time, following me around constantly, comforting me and getting me through it. Frankly, I don’t know if I would have made it if it weren’t for my dogs!
we dog lovers already knew the answer before they did their study! Love the picture—we have a lab mix and she is definitely my second shadow. Knows when I’m sad, knows when I’m sick...such a sweet companion. We’ve had cats and horses, too—my daughter often found comfort from her horse when she was crying: she’d cry into his neck and he’d nuzzle her and get very protective of her. Recently we had to sell him (broke ALL of our hearts) and I thought my tears would not ever stop. She is beside herself with sadness, but thank goodness she has a mission trip coming up and can focus on someone else and not her broken heart. She, too, is a BIG animal lover, and plans to be a vet...
"I notice you'se upset!... Are you gonna eat that?!!"
Dogs experience a wide range of human-like feelings. They know family and home, sadness, joy, play, teasing, protectiveness, shame, etc... It's a lot of work to raise a dog to be a really good dog, but once all of that work is done, a dog returns your effort a hundred times over.
Yeah, first they chew up your precious priceless stock certificates of Facebook, and then, when you cry over your lost fortune, they show empathy!