It is generally thought that dogs are very aware of our emotions, but in case the owner of a dog is really upset and sad, will the dog know it and will do everything possible to bring him help and comfort?
Pets tend to make our lives happy and, according to a study, dogs do it literally because they know something is worrying and makes us sad.
In an article titled Timmy’s in the well: Empathy and prosocial helping in dogs, published in July 2018 in the journal Learning & Behavior, the researchers showed that dogs with close ties to their owners were eager to to go through the door when they heard their owner crying. The journal pays tribute to Lassie, the dog superhero of 1950s television.
A group of researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the United States discovered, after a thorough analysis of dog behavior, that dogs had the ability to perceive the emotions that humans feel when living with them and the ability to try to comfort them.
“We found that dogs not only felt the feelings of their owners, but if a dog knew how to help them, they would go over obstacles to help them,” said lead author Emily Sanford, a graduate student at the University of Toronto. Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. She did her undergraduate research at Macalester College.
When the dog detects negative feelings from his owner, such as sadness, desolation, despair, he does everything in his power to help gim feel better and cheer him up. These animals try to play, attract the attention of their owner, bark or even break an object as long as it makes their owner in a good mood.
In addition, scientists have also shown that if the dog failed in the effort to improve the mood of his owner, he tended to stress and feel the same pain as the people who cared for it. According to the study, the researchers revealed that the dogs were crying and even getting sick if in the house where they live in, was a situation of very strong anguish that was not resolved for a long time.
