Emotions that dogs develop

  • Joy
  • Happiness
  • Content
  • Anger
  • Grief
  • Depression
  • Emotional & mental ability equivalent to 2.5 year old child at about 4-6 months old for dogs
    • Shame, contempt, guilt, pride don’t develop in humans til 2.75-4 years

Concepts of emotion

  • Dog’s amygdala (responsible for emotion) is 5 times bigger in comparison to human – feeling more than we are capable of
  • Cerebral cortex (processes information/problem solve/regulates emotion) smaller than ours – they can’t problem solve their emotions as well as us
  • Feel emotions more intensely than humans but less capable of processing them
  • Scent drives emotion – primary sense – 300m scent receptors compared to 7m for humans – memories based on scent
  • Anthropomorphism – assigning human emotions to non humans – unhelpful and unfair mostly, but can be useful if comparing dog to young child

Dogs reading humans

  • Humans don’t express emotions symmetrically – the right side of our face displays truest emotion – left gaze bias scanning the face from our left (their right) – dog is the only other creature that does LGB, doesn’t do it to other animals including dogs
  • Dogs had to evolve to read humans for survival
  • Aware of your body language and the tone of your voice
  • Fear coping strategies – flight/fight/freeze – don’t ignore
  • Arousal –  how responsive your dog is to stimuli – fear/excitement/nervous/frustration/anticipation – cortisol, adrenaline – detrimental to health long term – ears forward, mouth closed, tense, weight forward, tail high, stiff wag
    • Teach dog to deal with arousal
    • TTouch
    • Lead stroking
    • Licking
    • Sniffing
    • Non walk days – mental stimulation

Stress

  • Short term – wait for food – divert attention, yawn, lip lick – we rely on short term stress in order to give reward
  • Long term – separation anxiety – flight or fight – life limiting – shut down mistaken for submissive
  • Signs
    • Snarling
    • Sniffing
    • Diarrhoea
    • Frequent toileting
    • Shut down
    • Depression
    • inability to sleep
    • Lip licking
    • Biting
    • Spinning
    • Yawning
    • Grooming
    • Self mutilation – becomes physical pain rather than psychological pain
    • Low energy
    • Sweaty paws
    • Lack of appetite
    • Salivating
    • Shaking
    • Dilated pupils
    • Leaning away
    • Ears pinned back
    • Diverting attention away
    • Whale eye
    • Tension in face
    • Tail neutral/tucked down, tense, possible small wag