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Lea Thompson
Instructor: Malcolm Campbell
UWRT 1103
08 November 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
forgot 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 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. 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 Malebranch, a French philosopher
and Oratory of Jesus, extended Descartes 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. 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 Malebranch believe that just

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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. 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 day 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. 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.
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 are 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.
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. First, Berns used a hand signal that signified a treat was being
offered up, and another one that signified the opposite. From the results gathered from Callie and

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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. 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 and visual sensory. In this experiment, dogs 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. 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

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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. The ideas of Guo and Mills are sort of parallel to that of
Descartes and Malebranch 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, Malebranch, 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
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. This information create another
questions: 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?

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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 us. Whether Im considering the
reaction of my German Shepherd, Bruto, after a dramatic crash on my bike or my current dog, a
Yorkshire Terrior named Sammy snuggling up next to me as I cry over the loss of 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 go hand in hand- a mans best friend.

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Works Cited
Berns, Gregory. Dogs Are People, Too. Www.nytimes.com. N.p., 5 Oct. 2013. Web.17 Oct.
2016.
Castro, Joseph. Why Do Dogs Wag Their Tails? Live Science. N.p., 28 April. 2014. Web. 6
Nov. 2016.
Coren, Stanley. Which Emotions Do Dogs Actually Experience? Modern Dog Magazine. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.
Ghose, Tia. Dogs and Humans Evolved Together, Study Suggests. Livescience.com. N.p., 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.