Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Do Dogs Have Emotions?

Dogs have a highly evolved social system that includes sharing, bonding, pecking order, affection, protection and more. Dogs have a wide emotional range. Dogs feel emotions such as fear, anger, stress, security and attachment much as we do. Far from being just animated toys, dogs are complex social animals with behaviors uniquely their own.

Human beings are prone to two kinds of emotion. One could be called “pure” emotion and the other “impure”. A pure emotion is something you feel with no thought process--you don’t have to think about it. If somebody angers or insults you, you don’t have to decide to get angry. And you certainly don’t decide to fall in love or decide to feel sorrow at the death of a loved one.

Impure emotions such as self-pity, guilt or remorse do require a thought process. If you don’t stop and think about those things, they won’t occur. Dogs have our identical emotional makeup in the realm of pure emotion. However, they don’t think about them so they don’t feel guilt about the past or worry about the future, for example. Dog's emotions are purely in the here and now.

In interacting with dogs, remember that dogs feed on emotion. Dogs' emotions are very sensitive to your emotional projections.

by Dr. Dennis Fetko, Ph.D., "Dr. Dog"
http://www.DrDogsBehaviorSolutions.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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