Signs That Your Dog Can Sense a Death in the Family
The body language of a dog is much different than that of a human. Understanding what certain non-verbal signs mean may help you understand if your dog is sensing something as significant as death. You must first consider how dogs interact with each other. While they may bark or whine to communicate with one another, most of their communication is nonverbal.
Dogs can identify weakness in other animals by their body language. For example, a dog that is cowered or hunched over indicates that this dog is weak and maybe even ill. Often, dogs are much better observers than people. When they meet a person that is quiet and frail they may be much more likely to notice that they are unwell. If a person appears sick enough then a pup may become increasingly aware of the seriousness of their condition and the potential for death.
With this knowledge in mind, you can easily gather how a dog may react to a person who is near-death. Perhaps they will want to quietly sit near the person for comfort or they may even take on the role of protecting the person from preconceived dangers. Perhaps the dog will whine to other people to try to get help for the ailing person.
Here are a few body language signs that may indicate that your dog senses death in a family member:
Here are a few additional signs that your dog may showcase if he senses the death of a family member:
What Science Says About Dogs Sensing Death
We’re all aware of how powerful a dog’s nose is. Depending on the breed, their noses can range from impressive to exceptional, but there’s one thing that they all have in common: They can smell much more than we can.
It’s this sense of smell that makes dogs perfect for a variety of different situations. In particular, they can help us do our jobs or stay as safe as possible. Dogs help with police work and medical alerts, and they can track down prey during a hunt or save someone’s life during a search-and-rescue mission.
Compared to humans, who have a measly 6 million olfactory senses in our noses, dogs have a whopping 300 million, along with a larger area of the brain dedicated to understanding different smells. A person who is dying smells different from someone who is healthy, and dogs can likely pick up on this difference, even if they don’t know for sure what it means.
More than verbal communication, dogs rely on body language to talk to each other and understand their favorite humans. Even without their impressive noses, their ability to understand body language gives them a heads up whenever something is wrong. They know when you’re having a bad day and need a cuddle or when you’re feeling sick.
The same goes for when someone is dying. Your dog will react instinctively to even unconscious changes in body language, whether it’s hunched shoulders or trembling hands.
Although the ability to sense death can be explained by the strength of your dog’s nose, many people believe that the reason is as simple as a “sixth sense.” It’s almost as though your dog knows when your soul is ready to move on.
There’s no real way of knowing what your dog is thinking when they stay with somebody on their death bed, so this sixth sense theory can seem more than a little farfetched. This belief, however, does have historical precedent.
The Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks are examples of ancient cultures that used dogs as guardians of the dead. While the jackal-headed Anubis watched over Egyptian tombs, dogs were believed to guard the souls of Grecians. In fact, in Persia, a dog was often kept close to a dying person to help protect their newly released soul from evil spirits.
How Do Dogs Know When Someone Is About to Die?
There are several beliefs about how dogs know when someone is about to die.
Do dogs grieve?: Understanding canine love and loss
We hear stories about dogs mourning their owners after they’ve passed away. There was Figo, the K-9 officer who was photographed in 2013 paying his respects at the funeral of his dead partner. And earlier this year, a dog waited patiently for two weeks for his owner to return after he was murdered. But how much of the situation do they understand?
A study from the ASPCA suggests that two-thirds of dogs show symptoms of separation anxiety when their owners have passed away, including whining, loss of appetite and depression.
Veterinarian Michael W. Fox said dogs definitely mourn, that some even realize their owner is dead before the hospital calls the family, though there’s not much evidence to support that. Animal behavior expert Sarah Wilson told People it’s not so much about dogs mourning than them not understanding why you’re not around anymore.
“For an animal, you are their world, and they don’t comprehend death or divorce, or that you are no longer there,” Wilson said.
It is a process of grieving, but we simply don’t know how much of the situation dogs understand. That’s largely because dogs communicate their feelings differently than we do, and animal behavior science hasn’t quite figured out how to interpret it.
Many stories show dogs’ unwavering loyalty, though not necessarily traditional mourning, for their human owners after they die. There’s the famous story of Hachiko, a Japanese dog from the 1930s who visited a train station every day for nine years, waiting for his master to arrive. There was another dog in the 1930s named Spot who stayed by his owner Dave Brack’s grave for months after he passed away. And one dog in Siberia has been waiting by the roadside for more than a year after its owner passed away in late 2014.
It’s not just humans. There have been stories about dogs mourning other dogs. In 2009, Psychology Today writer Steven Kotler shared a story about how his dog Willi repeatedly tried to cover up the body of his canine friend Joey with a blanket. And last year, journalist Andrea Bell shared a photo on Facebook of her dog Boris laying on the graves of their two older dogs who had recently passed away.
“In its own way, it’s really quite beautiful,” Ball wrote. “Animals have more ‘humanity’ than most humans.”
That humanity shows in how they deal with sickness too. Some researchers suggest dogs pick up on certain scents and body language when their owners are sick or dying, and offer comfort in response. This is one of the reasons why more rest homes and hospices have live-in dogs — not only because they make residents happy, but also because they pick up on cues that doctors and nurses may not.
“A lot of resident dogs know those people and know something is different, whether the smell changes or they’re moving less,” Bonnie Beaver, professor at Texas A&M University, said to The Daily Mail.
We may not understand whether dogs actually know when we’ve passed away, but their love, dedication and commitment to us carries on long after we’re gone. Featured via