As one dog owner to another, dogs are undeniably man’s best friend. This becomes obvious when they sense us having a sad time, they want to help us feel better.
Therefore, what’s a surefire way as a dog owner to make a bad day a whole lot better? Dog lovers of all walks of life would say it’s time spent with their furry best friends. Furthermore, there’s a new study to back that up because your dog may be happy to help.
Research has already shown that when humans cry, our dogs also feel some sort distressed. The newest study finds that dogs not only feel distressed when they sense that their owners are sad but will try to do something to help us.
These findings were published in the journal Learning and Behavior.
Can Dogs Tell When Your Sad? See What You Think?
In the new study, the researchers brought together 34 pet dogs of different sizes and various breeds into the lab, along with their owners.
The willing participants were asked to sit behind a glass door where their dogs can clearly see them, and the dogs could hear them, and to say “Help” about every 15 seconds, in either a monotone or distressed voice.
During the trials in which the dog owners were acting out a non-distressed state, they were asked to hum “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in between their calls for help.
Meanwhile, in the trials where the humans acted distressed, the dog owners were asked to make crying sounds in between their calls.
The researchers recorded a video and observed how the dogs behaved in both settings and measured the dogs’ heart rates for variability between beats, which most likely indicates stress.
What’s more interesting is the dogs were also able to get through the door to their owners. Because the door was held shut by three small magnets, so to open it, all the dog had to do was lightly touch it, such as with their paws or noses.
So Did The Dogs Open The Door To Be With Their Distressed Owner?
The researchers discovered in the video that dogs didn’t open the door more often when their owners cried than when they hummed. “Dogs naturally want to be with their owners, so regardless of our condition where the dogs were exposed to humming, half the time will still go to their owners,” said Julia Meyers-Manor, senior study author, an assistant professor of psychology at Ripon College.
Nevertheless, the dogs who did open the door opened it about 40 seconds faster when their owners were crying compared to when the owners were humming, Meyers-Manor said.
Also, when researchers compared the behaviors of the dogs as they saw and heard their owners cry with how they usually behaved.
What they found was that the dogs who pushed through the door showed less stress than those who didn’t push through the door to be with their owners. The researchers measured this by way of the rate of “stressful behaviors” the dogs exhibited per second.
It appears that the dogs who didn’t go through the door would become more and more stressed by their owner crying but they then sort of became paralyzed and were not able to do anything at all, Meyers-Manor told Live Science.
But she also noted that the scientists saw a vast range of different behaviors, including other dogs who were unconcerned to their owners’ cries.
Will Dogs Show Distress When They Hear You Cry?
Past research indicates that dogs will show distress when they hear a stranger cry or a baby cry.
I think that they have a common response to crying, but I am taking the action of helping my owner feel better maybe a little bit more dependent on the bond between the owner and our furry companion. Meyers-Manoradded.
This study helps support what many dog owners already knew through experience. Their dogs are responsive to them when they are distressed, and that they try to take action to ease our distress.
Which gives us dog lovers another perfect reason why we need to be dogs best friend too!
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