Do dogs think we’re friends/family?
Now, all this talk of oxytocin might have reminded you of another type of relationship: the bond between mother and child. Not for nothing is oxytocin sometimes known as the “love hormone”: it’s what connects parents to their children, helps us make friends and trust one another, and if we’re lucky, gets us some terrific orgasms along the way.
So if bonding with our pet doggos can also release this hormone, does it follow that dogs see us as their family? After all, it certainly seems to work in the opposite direction – at least if all those social media posts about “fur babies” are anything to go by. We dress our canine companions up in little outfits; we give them cutesy names like Trixie Woofwoof or Fred; we spend thousands of dollars a year on them; and we mourn them when they’re gone. Advertisement
But is the same true in reverse? Perhaps not: as psychologist Jessica Oliva pointed out in Science Magazine, all that petting and eye gazing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It may well be that the pups were anticipating food or playtime with their humans – both behaviors that can also boost oxytocin levels.
That said, perhaps it depends on how you define “parent”. That unique bond between hound and human doesn’t just reveal itself through pointing and puppy-dog eyes – dogs are also trusting and dependent on their two-legged companions in a way that even other pets are not.
“Adult dogs behave towards their caregivers like human children do,” said Lisa Horn, from the Vetmeduni’s Messerli Research Institute, Austria, back in 2013. She had recently led an investigation into the “secure base effect” in dogs – the phenomenon more familiarly seen in young children, who depend on the presence of their parents for confidence and emotional security.Advertisement
And that’s not the only way in which dogs can resemble children in their interactions with humans. “They try to understand from facial expressions what humans want,” Carlo Siracusa, an associate professor of clinical behavior medicine and director of the animal behavior service at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, told NBC in 2020. “How likely is it they are going to get something to eat rather than be punished. They are like toddlers.”
Is “man’s best friend” just us being soppy, or does your pup really see you as a parent?
Just two siblings palling around. credit: Nina Buday/Shutterstock.com
Dogs, we are told, are humanity’s best friend. They’ve been by our side for up to 30,000 years and counting, evolving from a few particularly dopey apex predators into the loyal companions of close to half of US households.
But in some ways, this relationship presents something of a philosophical quandary. We don’t know what exactly went down when dogs first wandered in from the cold all those years ago, but it’s certainly true that most of our canine pals were working animals for a lot of human history. They helped us hunt, or herd livestock, or even cook in the kitchens, all at the mercy of an arbitrary hierarchy imposed by their human masters.Advertisement
Today, the picture is pretty different. Dogs are pampered, carried around in handbags, and given fabulous haircuts and TV shows. But what does it look like from the dogs’ perspective? Do they think of us as their friends? Their parents? Or are we still just their masters, ordained by some natural law to rule over them with a firm but loving hand?
And more importantly – can we ever truly know what lies in the mind of a pupper?
If this doesn’t already show that our dogs use us as a secure base, the next portion of this study certainly will. In the final phase of the experiment, the same dogs were placed in a room with a piece of clothing worn by their owner or a stranger. When the dogs were alone in the room, they would paw their owner’s clothes and sit nearer to the chair that it was placed on. How cute is that?
To determine this, they used a theory called “secure base effect” as their starting point. Secure base effect is the theory that children use their parents as a secure base when they are interacting with their environments.
To determine if dogs show this same behavior with their owners, the researchers set up a series of situations for the dogs participate in. The first was scenario with an absent owner, the second was a scenario with a silent but present owner, and the third scenario was with an encouraging owner.
What the researchers found was that the dogs were much less motivated to figure out how to get the tasty treat from the toy when their owners were absent than when they were present. What is really interesting is that whether the owner was silent or encouraging had little impact on the dog’s motivation. They simply just wanted the comfort in knowing that their owners were there with them while they solved their puzzle.
I have no doubt that if asked, any dog owner will agree that their pups are part of the family. For many, raising their beloved fur baby brings them joy and gives them a sense of purpose, similar to parents raising a human child. We may feel that our pups are our children, but do our dogs see us as their parents?
Do Dogs View Humans As Dogs? ( Sounds Weird )
Many believe that a healthy puppy-parent relationship has less to do with biology than socialization. So, yes, a puppy can definitely think of you as his “mother” — that is, his provider and protector — and develop as strong an emotional bond with you as if you were blood-related.
Your puppy will also quickly learn to pick you out among strangers, both by sight and through his powerful sense of smell. However, developing healthy interactions and ensuring your pup recognizes you as his loving pet parent requires some nurturing.
With 220 million receptors compared to the 5 million humans have, a dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than human senses, according to James Walker, former director of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University. When it comes to human recognition, dogs are able to decipher one individual’s odor-causing secretions from another’s. In addition, dogs possess a pheromone at the base of the nasal passage that provides species and sex information. Mom’s scent will be found on skin, clothes, in her house, car and bed, providing a constant stream of information for Fido to use.
Canine eyesight is constantly being investigated but it seems domestication has made dogs much more aware of human facial expressions. In 2013, Outi Vainio, DVM, of the University of Helsinki, discovered that when shown s of humans, dogs held their gaze on their owners’ eyes longer than on others. Reinforcing these findings are those by Paolo Mongillo, of the University of Padua in Italy. In his study, published in the journal, Animal Behaviour, a dog gazed at his owner walking across a room for a significantly longer period of time than he would a stranger. To ensure this was due to sight rather than smell, researchers asked human participants to walk across a room wearing paper bags to conceal their faces; this time the dogs were much less interested.
Behavior may play an important role in letting Spot know who his pet parent is. Historically, dogs lived as packs with a reliable, strong and dependable leader. The human-animal bond is not based on a battle for dominance, the VCA Animal Hospitals website claims. The bond is driven by several factors, including genetics, learning and conflict resolution. VCA asserts that positive reinforcement, socialization with other people and dogs, as well as consistency in training, develops a much stronger, healthier and lasting bond between dogs and their human families.