7 ms·

Dogs rush to help when owners cry, study suggests

82 points by shawndumas 8y ago

esquivalience 8y ago
I suspect most dog owners will not be surprised by this.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  Well sure. The whole value in these sorts of studies is that pet owners' intuitions are untrustworthy, as they have a very strong inclination to anthropomorphize their pets.
  - veridies 8y ago
    I've heard people object to anthropomorphizing animals before, and it's always seemed like a very odd objection to me. Dogs and cats react very similarly to us when it comes to things like threats or fear or play. That makes sense given that a lot of the evolutionary constraints on any predatory animal are going to be similar. Additionally, dogs absolutely co-evolved with humans, with us adapting to understand and build relationships with them and them evolving to incorporate themselves into our communities. I'm not saying pets are exactly the same as humans, but I do think that you're going to be hard-pressed to find a better heuristic for dog behavior than thinking about what a non-verbal human would do in their situation. (I know you didn't make a particularly strong statement here; I'm just responding to other objections I've heard).
    - esquivalience 8y ago
      Given the results, perhaps the studies show that non-dog-owners have an unreliable viewpoint due to strong impulse to object to anthropomorphization. ;)
    - Retra 8y ago
      The problem is that people don't even consider other mental models. It's easy to say "I can't do that", but that doesn't mean a dog can't do it: it has a dog brain, so it is obviously not limited to feeling what humans would feel in situations. It's a justifiable heuristic, but it is still a heuristic, and it's we choose because we are very biased toward human conceptualizations. So we shouldn't say it is a good heuristic, and we should be wary when relying on it to make decisions.
tjr225 8y ago
Developing our co-evolution with dogs was perhaps the greatest thing humans ever did...we really don't deserve dogs.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I wonder if it was entirely human, or if it was the proto-dogs themselves that self selected - it would have had to been the the animals that were already predisposed to hanging with us that would have been domesticated - I doubt ancient human's would have gone out of their way to capture, pen up, and train them.
  - wyldfire 8y ago
    The new "Cosmos" series has an episode that touches on the domestication of dogs [1]. It talks about variations in hormone levels of wolves: some naturally feared humans less and were rewarded with scraps of food. And thus formed an early symbiosis with man. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQHBmY6LbiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQHBmY6LbiA
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      It did seem strange my thoughts were being narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson while I typed. That was a fun series.
faitswulff 8y ago
Reminds me of this video: "Dogs Tested to See Whether They’d Defend Owner During Home Invasion" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ74oFctP_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ74oFctP_g Spoiler alert: dogs are probably not as helpful as their owners think during high stress scenarios.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  That video's contrived. Of course your average companion dog or hound / gundog isn't going to really know what to do when an intruder appears. Try the same experiment with dogs who've been trained for protection. Search YouTube for protection dog.
  - faitswulff 8y ago
    I don't think it's contrived compared to the expectations that ordinary people have of their dogs. Dog owners likely secretly think that their pooch is going to protect them, even if they're not protection dogs.
    - oldmanhorton 8y ago
      I know a ton of people with dogs and have heard every owner say that, and only one or two were serious. The joke is usually that the dogs like people too much and would think the intruder was a new friend. Perhaps it's a regional thing but I don't think most expect protection from their dogs
      - WillPostForFood 8y ago
        Agree - the only real protection is as early warning (barking). Then the intruder licking begins.
        code_duck 8y ago
        Dogs act very differently with strangers that the dog sees accepted by the owner then strangers who are unknown. Have you never been growled at by a dog that is tense and bristling? Or had one lunge to bite you?
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
"It is interesting to think that all these anecdotes of dogs rescuing humans, they could be grounded in truth, and this study is a step toward understanding how those kinds of mechanisms work," she said. I don't understand this comment, does Emily Sanford think all these stories are made up? The few times I've hurt myself enough to verbally whine both my 15 month old pups have swiftly approached, and they're in a markedly different state to when I call them over to play.
- wgerard 8y ago
  > I don't understand this comment, does Emily Sanford think all these stories are made up? More likely she's not immediately attributing these stories to "dogs intentionally come to the aid of humans." People anthropomorphize pets to an enormous extent. One can imagine plenty of other reasons why a dog might e.g. alert the neighbors that their owner is in trouble ("I'm hungry and my owner isn't feeding me" is a very simplistic one off the top of my head). It's well worth being skeptical about.
gok 8y ago
Our newborn daughter cried right after we came home from the hospital, and our dog immediately started barking at mom and dad. Weirdly, the dog has never barked in reaction to the baby ever again since that first time. My wife and I have a hypothesis that the dog was worried we couldn’t hear the baby, and was reassured when seeing us tend to the baby quickly.
- spdustin 8y ago
  This may be outdated now, but I read a lot of canine behavioral research when I got my (late) dog about 16 years ago. She was a white German Shepherd Dog named Stella, and I miss the hell out of her. One recurring theme was a dog's role in their "pack" (in the case of pets, the humans and other pets they live with). A dog who understands that their owner is the "alpha" will bark as a warning to them. Example: It was recommended that, if a dog barked at the door when someone knocked/rang owners praised their dog—"Good warning, thank you!" (and maybe a treat)—and then re-engage them quickly with another command ("sit!") if you choose not to investigate. They'd ostensibly come to learn that their single bark was their job. I did this with Stella, and whenever someone came to the door, she barked once, ran to me, and sat down, because she learned I may or may not answer it, and her job was done. If someone was lurking, she'd bark, run to me, go back to where she saw the person, and if they were still there, this would repeat, regardless of praise. It stood out as unusual, and research suggested that that's what she wanted me to know. "This is different, boss! Come look!" I used this concept in all her training and interactions; humans were her betters, and I was her alpha. Pack animals (it was said) got anxiety when the pecking order wasn't clear to them. That anxiety causes all sorts of what we call "problem behavior" (barking excessively, chewing/scratching at the door when their human leaves the house, rushing through open doors, etc.). She was the most loving, fun, hard-working, peaceful, well-behaved dog I ever owned, and I believe it was coming to view our family as (from her canine perspective) her pack that made her training and integration into our lives such a success.
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    Your post was a oasis of rational emotions in a dessert of anthropomorphizing sob-storys. Thank you.
OldSchoolJohnny 8y ago
Cats do too.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  All of my parents' cats have been very attentive to bad states of mind in people. My sister has social anxiety and suffered from depression for a long time. All of their cats both past and present would/will pick up on this, and come to her, to snuggle and purr. As aloof as cats can seem, they do have a drive for companionship, and not just for food or snacks. A warm, purring cat on your lap can be surprisingly therapeutic.
  - a3n 8y ago
    I've had a cat sleep on my chest, and my son sleep on my chest. They are both very grounding and calming experiences. I suddenly wonder if imagining a cat sleeping on my chest would help me sleep.
    - seren 8y ago
      Probably the same effect that a heavy blanket that increase the production of serotonin and has a calming effect.
- bitwize 8y ago
  I was upset about something as a teenager, flopped on the bed, and was surprised to find two paws and a little gray feline face peeking over the bed at me. The cat had come to check on me. And this was a cat who wasn't particularly cuddly or affectionate towards humans.
- atom-morgan 8y ago
  Yeah, I lived with someone who had a cat that didn't care for me all that much. One day, I was laying in bed crying, and that cat snuggled right up next to me. I couldn't help but smile.
erickhill 8y ago
When we first brought my daughter home from the hospital we let our old pug smell her. He growled once when she first cried, then tilted his head from the sound. Later we put her in her first bath - she shrieked! We did this in the middle of our living room in a small plastic tub on the floor. We were sitting on the floor; I sat on my knees. He (Cyrano) sat with us and while she shrieked, he placed one of his paws on one of my legs. He’d never done anything like that in his entire life. It looked so... human. It was so strange a family member took a picture of the event. I miss that old boy. He was a good dog.
pvaldes 8y ago
Wolves can help also when encounter a child crying. The sound seems to trigger a cub protection response.
amelius 8y ago
How about dogs that know (i.e., predict) when their owners come home? https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/scientific-heretic-rupert-sheldrake-on-morphic-fields-psychic-dogs-and-other-mysteries/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/scientific-...
dixie_land 8y ago
IDK I love my dog but when I fake falling to the floor to see how she reacts she would come running and hump me
natejenkins 8y ago
I often tell people that I love my dog more than any human has ever loved a child, but I don't love this study. The result is fairly obvious to any dog owner, but the study is representative of the type of "pop" science that appears so often in the news but carries little actual significance. 34 dogs total, 17 in each group (humming vs crying), 9 of which respond to humming and 7 of which respond to crying, albeit the latter much faster than the former. Of those 34 dogs, 16 were therapy dogs. While the time difference is large, more dogs respond to humming than crying. So we have a very small sample size which is biased towards therapy dogs. It is also very susceptible to p-hacking. Why "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"? Was this the song that produced the largest effect out of 20 different songs? Why do more dogs respond to the humming than crying but the dogs that do respond to crying act so quickly? Were the crying sounds much louder than the humming? Why not crying vs yelling, both of which are likely of similar volume? And so on.
- toast_coder 8y ago
  Do you think you experience emotions differently than other human beings? It seems really presumptuous to say you love somthing more than others ever have. Presumptuous and insulting. Furthermore, i think alot of people would say sacrifice is the greatest display of love, and I would bet a whole lot more parents have sacrificed a whole lot more for their children then anything you have sacrificed for for dog.
  - robotrout 8y ago
    I'm sure he takes his dog to "dog care" every day, where it's played with constantly (not caged). He would never leave his dog alone in his 500 square foot apartment all day, barking it's loneliness to the delight of his neighbors. While such dog care can be very expensive, he sacrifices that money even more gladly than a mother would for her child's care. This is what he implies with his statement, and I see no reason he would lie to us.
    - Retra 8y ago
      You can't analyze a person's behavior, especial their emotional behavior, without including cultural context. Society does not appreciate people leaving toddlers home alone, but they do not care if you do so with a puppy. That alone is enough to make the matter of "dog care" irrelevant in assessing someone's feelings on the matter.
jimnutt 8y ago
Shoot, this is how I recapture our dog when he gets loose. Chasing him is no good, he thinks that's a game, so I just collapse on the sidewalk and yell for him to come help. He trots right back over to me.
- robohamburger 8y ago
  I wish I had thought of that when I had a dog who liked to run away! Mine really like car rides, and we didn't live in the city so I would just get in my car and slowly ride up behind him with the door open and he would jump in.
- dvtv75 8y ago
  I have a greyhound who occasionally likes to go for a run by himself. He doesn't think of it as a game, it seems to me that he's just off to patrol his territory. It's not just his running speed that makes him hard to catch, either. His reflexes are so quick that when I grab for his collar, if he doesn't want me to grab it, I can't. He's like those ninja movies where the fight scenes are sped up. Last time he went for a run I had to get the car! Found him playing with some kids at the local sports ground - I'm glad greyhounds have such a pleasant nature, and love people so much, because if he'd appeared any more aggressive than a giant and playful puppy, there might have been problems.
GordonS 8y ago
As a child, we had a cat that would do this - any time any of us cried, or even when we were really sad, she would come over and start miaowing and rubbing against us.
AstralStorm 8y ago
Are they really trying here to get igNoble due to essentially wasting research money?
- Retra 8y ago
  If you want to find "wasted" money, look to the entertainment and sports industries.
srge 8y ago
I had a mild panic attack during a LSD trip and my dog curled on my side and basically « sucked » my anxiety and made me feel relaxed. On another day, my wife remembered a sad event in her life and began to cry silently. Our dog woke up and came to sit at her side calmly. We don’t deserve dogs.
- dvtv75 8y ago
  Some time back, my partner had a really sad event in her life, and she sat on the couch crying. We have two dogs, a happy yet dumb-as-a-rock greyhound, and a collie-staffie cross. The collie noticed, jumped up on the couch, and cuddled into her to (try and) make her happy again. When we lost her pack mate to cancer, a few years ago, she sat on the couch for ten days, didn't eat, just lay with her head between her paws. We were all heartbroken, myself most of all, but she was too sad to help anyone this particular time. After she recovered, she helped me a lot. We don't deserve dogs, but dogs are awesome and we could learn a lot from them. “Be the person your dog thinks you are!” ― J.W. Stephens
AdamJacobMuller 8y ago
I was a bit sick a few weeks ago and spent some time throwing up in the bathroom (the flu is not fun). My 10-year-old 14-pound jack russell terrier mix stood in the door of the bathroom not facing/watching me but staring outwards. I obviously can't be sure of this, but, I choose to believe that she realized I was not feeling well and was in a vulnerable position and was protecting me. Going to miss that girl someday.

82 points by shawndumas 8y ago

esquivalience 8y ago

I suspect most dog owners will not be surprised by this.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
Well sure. The whole value in these sorts of studies is that pet owners' intuitions are untrustworthy, as they have a very strong inclination to anthropomorphize their pets.
- veridies 8y ago
  I've heard people object to anthropomorphizing animals before, and it's always seemed like a very odd objection to me. Dogs and cats react very similarly to us when it comes to things like threats or fear or play. That makes sense given that a lot of the evolutionary constraints on any predatory animal are going to be similar. Additionally, dogs absolutely co-evolved with humans, with us adapting to understand and build relationships with them and them evolving to incorporate themselves into our communities. I'm not saying pets are exactly the same as humans, but I do think that you're going to be hard-pressed to find a better heuristic for dog behavior than thinking about what a non-verbal human would do in their situation. (I know you didn't make a particularly strong statement here; I'm just responding to other objections I've heard).
  - esquivalience 8y ago
    Given the results, perhaps the studies show that non-dog-owners have an unreliable viewpoint due to strong impulse to object to anthropomorphization. ;)
  - Retra 8y ago
    The problem is that people don't even consider other mental models. It's easy to say "I can't do that", but that doesn't mean a dog can't do it: it has a dog brain, so it is obviously not limited to feeling what humans would feel in situations. It's a justifiable heuristic, but it is still a heuristic, and it's we choose because we are very biased toward human conceptualizations. So we shouldn't say it is a good heuristic, and we should be wary when relying on it to make decisions.

tjr225 8y ago

Developing our co-evolution with dogs was perhaps the greatest thing humans ever did...we really don't deserve dogs.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
I wonder if it was entirely human, or if it was the proto-dogs themselves that self selected - it would have had to been the the animals that were already predisposed to hanging with us that would have been domesticated - I doubt ancient human's would have gone out of their way to capture, pen up, and train them.
- wyldfire 8y ago
  The new "Cosmos" series has an episode that touches on the domestication of dogs [1]. It talks about variations in hormone levels of wolves: some naturally feared humans less and were rewarded with scraps of food. And thus formed an early symbiosis with man. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQHBmY6LbiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQHBmY6LbiA
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    It did seem strange my thoughts were being narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson while I typed. That was a fun series.

faitswulff 8y ago

Reminds me of this video: "Dogs Tested to See Whether They’d Defend Owner During Home Invasion" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ74oFctP_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ74oFctP_g Spoiler alert: dogs are probably not as helpful as their owners think during high stress scenarios.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
That video's contrived. Of course your average companion dog or hound / gundog isn't going to really know what to do when an intruder appears. Try the same experiment with dogs who've been trained for protection. Search YouTube for protection dog.
- faitswulff 8y ago
  I don't think it's contrived compared to the expectations that ordinary people have of their dogs. Dog owners likely secretly think that their pooch is going to protect them, even if they're not protection dogs.
  - oldmanhorton 8y ago
    I know a ton of people with dogs and have heard every owner say that, and only one or two were serious. The joke is usually that the dogs like people too much and would think the intruder was a new friend. Perhaps it's a regional thing but I don't think most expect protection from their dogs
    - WillPostForFood 8y ago
      Agree - the only real protection is as early warning (barking). Then the intruder licking begins.
      - code_duck 8y ago
        Dogs act very differently with strangers that the dog sees accepted by the owner then strangers who are unknown. Have you never been growled at by a dog that is tense and bristling? Or had one lunge to bite you?

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

"It is interesting to think that all these anecdotes of dogs rescuing humans, they could be grounded in truth, and this study is a step toward understanding how those kinds of mechanisms work," she said. I don't understand this comment, does Emily Sanford think all these stories are made up? The few times I've hurt myself enough to verbally whine both my 15 month old pups have swiftly approached, and they're in a markedly different state to when I call them over to play.

wgerard 8y ago
> I don't understand this comment, does Emily Sanford think all these stories are made up? More likely she's not immediately attributing these stories to "dogs intentionally come to the aid of humans." People anthropomorphize pets to an enormous extent. One can imagine plenty of other reasons why a dog might e.g. alert the neighbors that their owner is in trouble ("I'm hungry and my owner isn't feeding me" is a very simplistic one off the top of my head). It's well worth being skeptical about.

gok 8y ago

Our newborn daughter cried right after we came home from the hospital, and our dog immediately started barking at mom and dad. Weirdly, the dog has never barked in reaction to the baby ever again since that first time. My wife and I have a hypothesis that the dog was worried we couldn’t hear the baby, and was reassured when seeing us tend to the baby quickly.

spdustin 8y ago
This may be outdated now, but I read a lot of canine behavioral research when I got my (late) dog about 16 years ago. She was a white German Shepherd Dog named Stella, and I miss the hell out of her. One recurring theme was a dog's role in their "pack" (in the case of pets, the humans and other pets they live with). A dog who understands that their owner is the "alpha" will bark as a warning to them. Example: It was recommended that, if a dog barked at the door when someone knocked/rang owners praised their dog—"Good warning, thank you!" (and maybe a treat)—and then re-engage them quickly with another command ("sit!") if you choose not to investigate. They'd ostensibly come to learn that their single bark was their job. I did this with Stella, and whenever someone came to the door, she barked once, ran to me, and sat down, because she learned I may or may not answer it, and her job was done. If someone was lurking, she'd bark, run to me, go back to where she saw the person, and if they were still there, this would repeat, regardless of praise. It stood out as unusual, and research suggested that that's what she wanted me to know. "This is different, boss! Come look!" I used this concept in all her training and interactions; humans were her betters, and I was her alpha. Pack animals (it was said) got anxiety when the pecking order wasn't clear to them. That anxiety causes all sorts of what we call "problem behavior" (barking excessively, chewing/scratching at the door when their human leaves the house, rushing through open doors, etc.). She was the most loving, fun, hard-working, peaceful, well-behaved dog I ever owned, and I believe it was coming to view our family as (from her canine perspective) her pack that made her training and integration into our lives such a success.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  Your post was a oasis of rational emotions in a dessert of anthropomorphizing sob-storys. Thank you.

OldSchoolJohnny 8y ago

Cats do too.

KozmoNau7 8y ago
All of my parents' cats have been very attentive to bad states of mind in people. My sister has social anxiety and suffered from depression for a long time. All of their cats both past and present would/will pick up on this, and come to her, to snuggle and purr. As aloof as cats can seem, they do have a drive for companionship, and not just for food or snacks. A warm, purring cat on your lap can be surprisingly therapeutic.
- a3n 8y ago
  I've had a cat sleep on my chest, and my son sleep on my chest. They are both very grounding and calming experiences. I suddenly wonder if imagining a cat sleeping on my chest would help me sleep.
  - seren 8y ago
    Probably the same effect that a heavy blanket that increase the production of serotonin and has a calming effect.
bitwize 8y ago
I was upset about something as a teenager, flopped on the bed, and was surprised to find two paws and a little gray feline face peeking over the bed at me. The cat had come to check on me. And this was a cat who wasn't particularly cuddly or affectionate towards humans.
atom-morgan 8y ago
Yeah, I lived with someone who had a cat that didn't care for me all that much. One day, I was laying in bed crying, and that cat snuggled right up next to me. I couldn't help but smile.

erickhill 8y ago

When we first brought my daughter home from the hospital we let our old pug smell her. He growled once when she first cried, then tilted his head from the sound. Later we put her in her first bath - she shrieked! We did this in the middle of our living room in a small plastic tub on the floor. We were sitting on the floor; I sat on my knees. He (Cyrano) sat with us and while she shrieked, he placed one of his paws on one of my legs. He’d never done anything like that in his entire life. It looked so... human. It was so strange a family member took a picture of the event. I miss that old boy. He was a good dog.

pvaldes 8y ago

Wolves can help also when encounter a child crying. The sound seems to trigger a cub protection response.

amelius 8y ago

How about dogs that know (i.e., predict) when their owners come home? https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/scientific-heretic-rupert-sheldrake-on-morphic-fields-psychic-dogs-and-other-mysteries/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/scientific-...

dixie_land 8y ago

IDK I love my dog but when I fake falling to the floor to see how she reacts she would come running and hump me

natejenkins 8y ago

I often tell people that I love my dog more than any human has ever loved a child, but I don't love this study. The result is fairly obvious to any dog owner, but the study is representative of the type of "pop" science that appears so often in the news but carries little actual significance. 34 dogs total, 17 in each group (humming vs crying), 9 of which respond to humming and 7 of which respond to crying, albeit the latter much faster than the former. Of those 34 dogs, 16 were therapy dogs. While the time difference is large, more dogs respond to humming than crying. So we have a very small sample size which is biased towards therapy dogs. It is also very susceptible to p-hacking. Why "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"? Was this the song that produced the largest effect out of 20 different songs? Why do more dogs respond to the humming than crying but the dogs that do respond to crying act so quickly? Were the crying sounds much louder than the humming? Why not crying vs yelling, both of which are likely of similar volume? And so on.

toast_coder 8y ago
Do you think you experience emotions differently than other human beings? It seems really presumptuous to say you love somthing more than others ever have. Presumptuous and insulting. Furthermore, i think alot of people would say sacrifice is the greatest display of love, and I would bet a whole lot more parents have sacrificed a whole lot more for their children then anything you have sacrificed for for dog.
- robotrout 8y ago
  I'm sure he takes his dog to "dog care" every day, where it's played with constantly (not caged). He would never leave his dog alone in his 500 square foot apartment all day, barking it's loneliness to the delight of his neighbors. While such dog care can be very expensive, he sacrifices that money even more gladly than a mother would for her child's care. This is what he implies with his statement, and I see no reason he would lie to us.
  - Retra 8y ago
    You can't analyze a person's behavior, especial their emotional behavior, without including cultural context. Society does not appreciate people leaving toddlers home alone, but they do not care if you do so with a puppy. That alone is enough to make the matter of "dog care" irrelevant in assessing someone's feelings on the matter.

jimnutt 8y ago

Shoot, this is how I recapture our dog when he gets loose. Chasing him is no good, he thinks that's a game, so I just collapse on the sidewalk and yell for him to come help. He trots right back over to me.

robohamburger 8y ago
I wish I had thought of that when I had a dog who liked to run away! Mine really like car rides, and we didn't live in the city so I would just get in my car and slowly ride up behind him with the door open and he would jump in.
dvtv75 8y ago
I have a greyhound who occasionally likes to go for a run by himself. He doesn't think of it as a game, it seems to me that he's just off to patrol his territory. It's not just his running speed that makes him hard to catch, either. His reflexes are so quick that when I grab for his collar, if he doesn't want me to grab it, I can't. He's like those ninja movies where the fight scenes are sped up. Last time he went for a run I had to get the car! Found him playing with some kids at the local sports ground - I'm glad greyhounds have such a pleasant nature, and love people so much, because if he'd appeared any more aggressive than a giant and playful puppy, there might have been problems.

GordonS 8y ago

As a child, we had a cat that would do this - any time any of us cried, or even when we were really sad, she would come over and start miaowing and rubbing against us.

AstralStorm 8y ago

Are they really trying here to get igNoble due to essentially wasting research money?

Retra 8y ago
If you want to find "wasted" money, look to the entertainment and sports industries.

srge 8y ago

I had a mild panic attack during a LSD trip and my dog curled on my side and basically « sucked » my anxiety and made me feel relaxed. On another day, my wife remembered a sad event in her life and began to cry silently. Our dog woke up and came to sit at her side calmly. We don’t deserve dogs.

dvtv75 8y ago
Some time back, my partner had a really sad event in her life, and she sat on the couch crying. We have two dogs, a happy yet dumb-as-a-rock greyhound, and a collie-staffie cross. The collie noticed, jumped up on the couch, and cuddled into her to (try and) make her happy again. When we lost her pack mate to cancer, a few years ago, she sat on the couch for ten days, didn't eat, just lay with her head between her paws. We were all heartbroken, myself most of all, but she was too sad to help anyone this particular time. After she recovered, she helped me a lot. We don't deserve dogs, but dogs are awesome and we could learn a lot from them. “Be the person your dog thinks you are!” ― J.W. Stephens

AdamJacobMuller 8y ago

I was a bit sick a few weeks ago and spent some time throwing up in the bathroom (the flu is not fun). My 10-year-old 14-pound jack russell terrier mix stood in the door of the bathroom not facing/watching me but staring outwards. I obviously can't be sure of this, but, I choose to believe that she realized I was not feeling well and was in a vulnerable position and was protecting me. Going to miss that girl someday.