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The term "man's best friend" is commonly used when it comes to dogs, and it is not hard to understand why. The loyalty of a dog toward its owner is something that cannot be questioned. But in recent years, the tables have turned and humans have become more reliant on dogs than ever before - to help save lives.
According to The Humane Society of the United States, there are around 83.3 million owned dogs in the US alone, showing that America is clearly a nation of dog lovers. But do we underestimate the talent of these amazing creatures and see them purely as pets?

In recent years, organizations all over the world have looked to training dogs to detect medical conditions in humans.

Earlier this year, Medical News Today reported on research from UK charity Medical Detection Dogs (resource no longer available at www.medicaldetectiondogs.org.uk) detailing how dogs have the ability to alert their diabetic owners when their blood sugar levels are too low (hypoglycemic).

Other research has revealed how dogs are able to detect clostridium difficile bacteria - a component that causes many hospital-acquired infections - in feces samples and hospital air.

But how exactly are dogs able to detect human disease?

A dog has around 125 to 300 million scent glands, while a human has around 5 million scent glands. This means a dog's sense of smell is around 1,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than a human's.

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A dog's sense of smell is 1,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than a human's, making them the perfect candidates for sniffing out human disease.

It is a dog's intricate sense of smell that has captured the interest of the medical world in using these animals to help detect human diseases and to help people who suffer from these diseases live a more fulfilling life.
Dogs4Diabetics is a US organization founded in 2004 that researches, trains and places medical assistance diabetic alert dogs with insulin-dependent diabetics.

Ralph Hendrix, executive director of Dogs4Diabetics, told Medical News Today how dogs are able to detect hypoglycemia in diabetics.

"We believe all diseases have scent associated with the diseases, due to the changes occurring within the body, with different organs expressing different chemical compounds. These scents are evident in breath and sweat," he explained.

"Dogs have highly sensitive senses and can learn to recognize symptoms from many types of disorders. In our work, they are not taught to react to symptoms, but to scent."

But of course, these dogs do not automatically adapt to detection of these scents. A great deal of training goes into ensuring they acquire the correct smell to carry out their job.

According to Hendrix, the dogs they train must meet a set criteria in order to become medical detection dogs.

"The criterion ranges from their behavior characteristics, their relationships with humans (ability to bond and willingness to please), their environment soundness, to their work ethic, motivations, response to reward, etc."

Dogs4Diabetics uses breeds that have been raised and socialized to take part in service work. The dogs they use are donated to them by Guide Dogs for the Blind of San Rafael and Canine Companions for Independence of Santa Rosa, both in California.

Hendrix says that the dogs donated to them are primarily Labrador retrievers and golden retrievers, or a mix of the two breeds.

"Other breeds may work, but these breeds are well accepted for service work because of the temperament and disposition to work with their human companions," he told Medical News Today.

Explaining how dogs can be trained to sniff out hypoglycemia in diabetic patients, Hendrix said the dogs are trained on a scent collected from a diabetic's breath or sweat when they are experiencing hypoglycemia:

"That dog is trained to identify the hypoglycemic scent and then is taught to discriminate the hypoglycemic scent from other attractive, but distracting, scents through a series of games and training exercises. The dogs receive positive rewards for identifying the correct scent and for their work."

Hendrix added that it takes some time to train a dog to make the transition from "scent discrimination training" to detecting actual hypoglycemia on a diabetic in a home environment.

"All diabetics will have residual scent around from previous hypoglycemic episodes. This 'dead' scent lingers in their home, their clothes, their bed. The dogs have to learn to differentiate the 'dead,' lingering scent from the 'live' scent, and transition their alert to only the live scent for which they are rewarded."

Hendrix added that the dogs also have to be trained to identify and alert on the hypoglycemic scent within different environments, such as work, at school or in the car.

Dogs could be the future of cancer detection: a device called Na-Nose™ that can smell lung cancer compounds is based on a dog's sense of smell.
"To the dog, it is simply a game with positive rewards that is played everywhere," he added.
Hendrix explained that Dogs4Diabetics' clients also receive extensive training, including how to respond to the dog once it alerts them that there is a problem with their blood sugars. The owner must be sure that the dog is accurate in their alert by testing their blood sugar levels with a glucometer to confirm there are any changes.

It is not just hypoglycemia that dogs have the ability to sniff out. Continued research is looking at the use of dogs to detect various types of cancer - named "bio-detection dogs."

Earlier this year, Medical News Today reported on a study detailing how researchers are looking to create a breakthrough method of using dogs to detect ovarian cancer.

The researchers explained that the dogs are able to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs), or odorants, that are altered in the early stages of ovarian cancer.

A 2011 study conducted by researchers at Medical Detection Dogs also found that these VOCs could be biomarkers of bladder cancer.
Using four trained sniffer dogs to analyze urine samples from patients who had bladder cancer, alongside healthy controls, the researchers found that the dogs' specificity in detecting the cancer ranged from 56% to 92%.
A video from Medical Detection Dogs explaining how bio-detection dogs are able to detect scents of cancer and other diseases can be viewed below.

Previous research has also found that dogs may be able to smell volatile organic compounds from a patient's breath sample - as these compounds may appear on the breath in the early stages of cancer.
Medical News Today

"We condition the dog to the volatile pattern of a cancer sample with the use of an audible sound, such as a clicker. The clicker is associated to something the dog enjoys. For example, a treat or toy.

The clicker signals to the dog that the last behaviour carried out before the click was correct and he will receive his reward. Over time, the dog learns that the click only appears as he sniffs at a cancer sample."

From this ongoing research, investigators have even started creating devices that may detect cancer by "mimicking" the sensitivity in a dog's nose.

The - created by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Alpha Szenszor, a carbon nanotube manufacturer in Boston, MA - is a device that can analyze more that 1,000 different gases in the breath in order to detect lung cancer. In clinical trials, the device has been found to have up to 95% accuracy.

But regardless of numerous studies providing evidence that dogs are successful in detecting cancer among other human diseases, there is no doubt that some may have reservations with regard to the dogs' accuracy in identifying diseases.

Hendrix told Medical News Today that a dog's detecting ability is dependent on the training they have received and whether they have been trained to the required standards.

"I see no problem in using trained dogs with a proven ability to assist in the detection of the possible presence of a disease.

If the dog can identify the risk of its presence in the fashion that it has been trained with the known level of reliability, then I believe that the possibility exists that there is a problem, even if current technology does not immediately confirm the risk. The person should be followed more intently for the prospect of its appearance."

However, Hendrix noted that there are some dog training companies out there that are not providing the correct training needed to ensure their dogs are fully qualified medical detection dogs, and are therefore putting clients' health at risk.
"We are particularly concerned over cases where people are selling puppies and rescued dogs with purported hypoglycemic alerting skills to be used with diabetics and for public access," he said.

"It is impossible to imprint a puppy with a scent and then expect it to be a reliable and consistent alerter over its lifetime. But people are paying $20,000 or more in a desperate attempt to obtain a 'trained' dog."

Hendrix said there are also cases where pet dog trainers attempt to train service dogs or medical assistance dogs, but they do not have the relevant training or background.
"We are appalled when we hear of trainers or diabetics who are willing to put the life of their child or a loved one in the safety of a dog that has not been properly trained, certified, or without sustained training and ongoing support from experts," he added.
There is no doubt that over the years, dogs have become more than just our pets. They have become companions that help save lives.

The first diabetic hypoglycemia alert dog in Britain is a Labrador called Zeta. One of Zeta's owners, Angela, says she looked to Medical Detection Dogs for a hypo-alert dog that could help with the management of her husband's diabetes.

"The first time Zeta alerted, I became very emotional and cried because I did not really believe that alerting was possible. At first we thought she was making errors, then I realized that she was catching highs and also rapid drops in his blood sugar levels," says Angela, speaking to Medical Detection Dogs.

"We really don't know what we would do without her: she is worth her weight in gold!"

Emphasizing the benefits of these animals, Rob Harris, from Medical Detection Dogs, added:
"The real value of the dog comes with his ability to detect changes so early giving the client the opportunity to treat themselves, preventing paramedic callout and hospital admission. The assistance dog can accompany his partner everywhere, increasing confidence, independence and improving wellbeing."
According to Hendrix, the challenge is to provide "consistent, provable and reliable" training in order to make use of the dog's astounding senses so they can provide support to their human companions.

"Dogs are dogs, they cannot tell us what they scent, and trainers and handlers have to devise ways to both train the dogs and then validate the accuracy of their response to that training. They have to reinforce that training over the working life of the dog to sustain the skill. It can be done and there are protocols and processes that validate these skills."

So what does the future hold for bio-detection and medical detection dogs?

Dogs4Diabetics founder Mark Ruefenacht says he believes we have only "scratched the surface" in what a dog can do to assist with various medical diagnosis and the management of chronic diseases and disabilities.

"The oft-heard, 'human-animal bond' has so much potential in the way we move forward in our working relationships with dogs," he adds.

Donations for Dogs4Diabetics or UK charity Medical Detection Dogs (resource no longer available at www.medicaldetectiondogs.org.uk) can be made by visiting their websites.

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Medical detection dogs: how they could save our lives in a sniff

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The term "man's best friend" is commonly used when it comes to dogs, and it is not hard to understand why. The loyalty of a dog toward its owner is something that cannot be questioned. But in recent years, the tables have turned and humans have become more reliant on dogs than ever before - to help save lives.

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Living with a dog, you may think they have a pretty good memories. After all, a dog who's been through obedience training remembers commands and hand signals. And I know from years of dog walks that my pups seem to have a good memory for place (i.e., they always know which fences are the most fun to bark at and which shops will give them treats).

But do dog memories work the same way as humans? The answer is no, not really, but sometimes. Read on to learn how your dog's memory works, and find links to research and more info.

When you think about going for a walk, you probably remember specific walks you've taken in the past. You may reflect in your mind's eye on a particular path, or recall the time it rained while you were out for a stroll. Dogs don't really think that way- research shows, in fact, that they have very little direct recall.

Instead, dogs have associative memory. Dogs remember people, places, and experiences based on associations they have with them.

For example, my dogs "remember" walks because of their association with my walking shoes. Every time I pull out those shoes, even if I'm just going outside without the dogs, they get excited as if they're about to take a walk.

You can change your dog's associative memories over time. In fact, that's a big part of training!

Think about how you introduce your dog to new people. If you invite someone over and have them give your dog positive attention and treats, your dog will associate that person with positive attention and treats. They may not "remember" your guests the same way you remember them, but they will form associations.

Although dogs don't have the same kind of memory as we do, they can form negative associations that we may interpret as "bad memories."

For example, does your dog act fearful in the waiting room at the vet's office? If she's had a negative experience at the vet, she may not remember exactly what scared her so much, but she associates the waiting room with that fear.

You can help dogs overcome negative associations by replacing them with positive experiences. For example, take a few "fun" field trips to the vet's office where no exam takes place. Unfortunately, the stronger the association, the harder it is to change the memory.

You probably remember the first day your dog came home to live with you. But does your dog remember when they met you for the first time? The short answer is, they probably don't. But that doesn't mean they don't remember you.

Dogs may have some type of episodic memory, or the ability to remember specific events in the past. A recent study suggests this is possible. However, the same study shows that there are real limits to that type of memory for dogs. So your dog isn't probably able to reflect back on your first moments together in the same way you do.

However, their associative memories mean that they know who you are, and they know they like you! They are also strongly affected by smell, as detailed in the latest book by canine cognition expert Alexandra Horowitz. Indeed, a dog's sense of smell helps them recognize and "remember" you.

Just because dogs lack episodic memory doesn't mean they can't remember anything that ever happened to them. It's just that the vocabulary around animal memory is necessarily different than that around human memory.

Episodic memory has to do with the "sense of self." Our memories contribute to how we understand ourselves and our experiences in the world. But because dogs aren't verbal, it's very hard for humans to understand whether they have a similar sense of self.

However, recent studies show that dogs may have episodic-like memories. In a 2016 study conducted at the Family Dog Project at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, researchers found that dogs can remember events they witness (in this case, an action performed by a trainer). However, as far as researchers can tell, they don't retain those memories for very long.

So dogs may have short-term, episodic memory, but their associative memories stick with them longer.

Your dog might not remember every single thing you do together. She probably doesn't have fond memories of puppyhood. But she might remember watching you leave the house this morning, and her strong positive association with you mean she'll celebrate when you get home tonight.

Your dog's positive associations with you, your home, and her favorite doggy friends mean that she's constantly "remembering" your life together, and celebrating the good stuff in it. Even if dogs don't have fond memories of the past, their recognition of the present is a good reminder to live in the moment and enjoy every experience you have together.

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Living with a dog, you may think they have a pretty good memories. After all, a dog who's been through obedience training remembers commands and hand signals. And I know from years of dog walks that my pups seem to have a good memory for place (i.e., they always know which fences are the most fun to bark at and which shops will give them treats).

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New research is revealing how complex a dog's brain actually is.

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Byline: Samantha Tapfumaneyi and Francesca Street, CNN

(CNN) -- Trials are taking place in the UK to see whether specially trained airport sniffer dogs could detect Covid-19 in travelers, even before symptoms appear.

Sniffer dogs are already a common sight in airports -- usually, they're looking out for drugs, weapons or other contraband.

But specially trained dogs have also been trained to detect infections and diseases, including cancer, malaria and Parkinson's disease.

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in collaboration with charity Medical Detection Dogs and the UK's Durham University, say respiratory diseases change body odor, and they reckon trained dogs will be able to pick up this shift on Covid sufferers.

The UK government has given the team more than £500,000 (over $600,000) to put towards the research.

This preliminary trial has recruited six dogs, dubbed "The Super Six" -- they're all either labradors or cocker spaniels.

Professor James Logan, lead researcher on the project, and head of the department of disease control at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is confident the trial will yield results.

"It builds up on years of research that we've already done as a team to demonstrate that people who have a malaria infection have a distinctive body odor and we've shown that dogs can be trained to detect that with very high accuracy," says Logan.

So what's the training process like?

Professor Steve Lindsay, a public health entomologist at the UK's Durham University says the first step is collecting human odor samples -- both for people who've tested positive for Covid-19, and people who don't have the disease.

They're getting subjects to wear face masks for a few hours. Then the masks are passed on to the dogs, and used to help the animals distinguish between different scents.

It's not just face masks that are being used -- they're also getting subjects to wear nylon socks.

"Which is a bit strange," admits Lindsay. "But we've known from our previous experience that this is a really good way of collecting odors from people and it's such an easy way to do it."

Kickstarting the travel industry

Researchers believe that if the trial's successful, it could be a way to kickstart the travel industry, which has ground to a halt since the start of the pandemic.

It could eliminate the need for quarantines for air travelers.

Researchers hope the first set of dogs could be deployed to key entry points, like airports, in the UK within the next six months. Each dog could potentially screen up to 250 people per hour.

"The basic idea is we can screen travelers innocently coming into this country who may be carrying Covid-19, detect those people and isolate them from the rest of the community," says Lindsay.

There has been much discussion about the best ways to decrease the chance of Covid-19 infection during travel and airport transit. The US Transportation Security Administration is working on plans to check temperatures at some American airports, while Las Vegas airport announced on Twitter that it had installed vending machines loaded with personal protective equipment.

At Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), officials are trialing a live operation of CLeanTech, a full-body disinfection booth

Dr Claire Guest, CEO and co-founder of Medical Detection Dogs, said in a statement that she thinks the dogs' ability to quickly screen people will be invaluable as the UK eases lockdown measures.

"Hopefully this will prevent a second peak and enable precious NHS resources to be used where most needed," said Guest. "We are incredibly proud that a dog's nose could once again save many lives."

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Airport dogs could sniff out coronavirus.

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Byline: Samantha Tapfumaneyi and Francesca Street, CNN (CNN) -- Trials are taking place in the UK to see whether specially trained airport sniffer dogs could detect Covid-19 in travelers, even before symptoms appear. Sniffer dogs are already a common sight in airports -- usually, they're looking out for drugs, weapons or other contraband.

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Credit: Shutterstock

What's a surefire way to make a bad day a little bit better? Dog owners might say it's time spent with humankind's furry best friends. And according to a new study, your pet dog may be happy to help.

Previous research has shown that when humans cry, their dogs also feel distress. Now, the new study finds that dogs not only feel distress when they see that their owners are sad but will also try to do something to help.

The findings were published today (July 24) in the journal Learning and Behavior.

In the study, the researchers brought 34 pet dogs of various breeds and sizes into the lab, along with their owners. The owners were asked to sit (good human!) behind a glass door, where the dogs could see and hear them, and to say, "Help," every 15 seconds, in either a monotone or a distressed voice. [ In Photos: America's Favorite Pets]

In the trials in which the pet owners were acting out a nondistressed state, they were told to hum "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" in between their calls for help. Meanwhile, in the trials where they acted distressed, they were told to make crying sounds in between their calls. The researchers took a video of how the dogs behaved in both scenarios and measured the dogs' heart rates for variability between beats, which could indicate stress.

What's more, the dogs were also able to get through to door to their owners: The door was held shut by three small magnets, so to open it, the dogs just had to lightly touch it, such as with their paws or noses.

The researchers found that dogs didn't open the door more often when their owners cried than when they hummed. " Dogs want to be with their owners, so even in our condition where the dogs were exposed to humming, they still about half the time went to their owners," said senior study author Julia Meyers-Manor, an assistant professor of psychology at Ripon College.

But the dogs who did open the door opened it about 40 seconds faster when their owners were crying compared with when the owners were humming, Meyers-Manor said.

In addition, by comparing the behaviors of the dogs as they saw and heard their owners cry with how they normally behaved, the researchers found that dogs who pushed through the door showed less stress than those who didn't enter the door. The researchers quantified this via the rate of "stressful behaviors" the dogs exhibited per second.

"It seems like the dogs [who didn't go through the door] would get more and more stressed by the crying but that they then sort of became paralyzed and [were] not able to do anything," Meyers-Manor told Live Science. But she noted that the scientists saw a huge range of behaviors, including other dogs who were indifferent to their owners' cries.

The researchers noted that they found some variability in the heart rate of the stressed dogs as well, but this data was a bit more difficult to interpret, as you typically need about 2 minutes of data to get a good reading, Meyers-Manor said. However, in some cases, the researchers got only around 20 seconds before the dogs opened the door, ending the trial.

Another limitation of the study could be the varying abilities of the humans to act out signs of distress, the authors wrote. In other words, some people were bad at acting.

The final part of the study was a challenge called "impossible task," which measures the strength of a dog's bond with its owner. In this task, the dogs were shown into a room where their owner and a stranger stood on opposite sides of a testing apparatus. Both the owners and the strangers stood still and stared diagonally across the room; they didn't make eye contact with the dog. The dogs were taught to move a jar on the apparatus in order to retrieve food underneath it. After a couple of trials, the jar was then screwed onto its lid, so that the dogs couldn't retrieve the food.

The researchers found that in that last case, the dogs who had opened the door when they heard their owners crying spent more time gazing at their owners after unsuccessfully trying to retrieve the food than the dogs who didn't open the door. This may suggest that "openers in the distress condition may have a stronger bond with their owner than nonopeners," and the result is opposite for the task which involved humming, the researchers wrote. In the condition where the owner was humming, the dogs who didn't open the door gazed more at their owners than the dogs who did open the door.

And why did dogs with stronger bonds more often open the door when their owners were crying and less often when they were humming? That result may be "reflective of empathy," the authors wrote.

But it's difficult to conclude that for sure, Meyers-Manor said. And as to whether dogs want to help their owners or just want to alleviate their own sadness - that remains unclear.

Previous research has shown that dogs also show distress when they hear a stranger cry or a baby cry on a recording, Meyers-Manor said. "I think that they have a general response to this crying, but I think that taking the action to do the rescue may be a little bit more dependent on [the] relationship [with their owners]," she added.

This study "helps support what many owners already feel," Meyers-Manor said, "[that] their dogs are responsive to them when they are distressed ... and that they try to take action to alleviate that" distress.

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Your Dog Knows When You're Upset, and Wants to Help

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What's a surefire way to make a bad day a little bit better? Dog owners might say it's time spent with humankind's furry best friends. And according to a new study, your pet dog may be happy to help. Previous research has shown that when humans cry, their dogs also feel distress.

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Dogs can use their five senses to signal or sign to you that they follow the emotion you are displaying. Their senses are so finely tuned that they can pick up on problems or emotions you have not even thought they would be able to understand.

Dogs 'speak' to us through their body language, sounds they can make, and their facial expressions. Dogs use their senses to follow our body language, vocalizations, and facial expressions. However, the dog's extrasensory ability allows them to tune into signs we may not be able to see ourselves.

Dogs can 'read' facial expressions very well. Try the happy/sad mirror test. Sit in front of your dog and put on a happy face, you should get a happy, tail-wagging dog in return. Then, try a sad face and even add some sad sounds, and your dog will respond with concern and a worried expression as they mirror your facial expression. Dogs can also pick up on the sound of your voice, and as their sense of hearing has a wide frequency, they can hear you coming in from work and figure out your tone of voice as you arrive.

Dogs have a very acute sense of smell and can determine emotions like fear, anger, and disappointment. If you are feeling sad, your dog can sense this and feel subdued by you. Dogs respond to weeping with a submissive demeanor.

Dogs are able to sense if you plan something they don't enjoy. A bath, or visit to the vet may signal time to run away and hide. Dogs can understand fear because they are able to detect the increase in adrenalin, They can sense if your priorities have changed. A new baby in the house, a new job, or visitors; a dog can sense social situations that are challenging.

Dogs are sensitive to hormone changes and can sense if you are pregnant They understand grief and are known to howl when a loved one dies or to sit by a graveside and grieve the death of a family member. Dogs are amazingly sensitive to our emotions!

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Can Dogs Feel Their Owner's Emotions? - Wag!

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Dogs can use their five senses to signal or sign to you that they follow the emotion you are displaying. Their senses are so finely tuned that they can pick up on problems or emotions you have not even thought they would be able to understand.

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Have you ever felt that dogs can read people's minds? Does your dog get clingy when you're depressed or feeling sick? When you and your partner argue, does your dog go and hide?

Our dogs aren't clairvoyant, but they do have an uncanny ability to sense our emotions. How do they do it?

The truth about dogs

Dogs and humans have very similar social systems. We both live in tight-knit families (or packs) who protect each other and are very loyal. We both have a complex language of facial expressions, body posture, and vocalizations that promote bonding. At some point in history, early dogs learned to decode human nonverbal language. The better they anticipated our thoughts and feelings, the more they were rewarded with food, shelter and affection.

Mind readers?

We're often amazed and even mystified that our dogs are so astute. But why shouldn't they be? As Brian Kilcommons, the renowned dog trainer and author, points out: What else do they have to do but watch us all day, studying our every move? "Is she happy?" your dog might wonder. "Is she mad? Should I run for cover?" With their fates so tied to our every whim, our dogs are wise to monitor our moods. A good mood might mean an extra snuggle or a game of fetch. A bad mood might mean scary loud noises and a day spent hiding under the bed. It makes sense that dogs would watch us so closely, as our changing moods give essential clues as to what is about to happen next.

And dogs are great watchers. Better than humans, some might say. According to Patricia McConnell, an author and animal behaviorist: "Your dog is probably a far better observer than you are. We humans pay so much attention to language that it often interferes with our ability to see what's happening around us."

But in some ways we rely too heavily on what we can see. Our visual system is so highly evolved that it tends to override the more primitive senses of smell, touch and hearing-those which are highly developed in dogs. We're often not aware of what we're missing.

And finally, we can't see ourselves. Your friends, family and dogs know your habitual movements, expressions, and utterances, says McConnell, but you may not. Make a video of yourself interacting with your dog, and you'll be amazed at what you notice.

Body Language

Our dogs can read us like a book. It's commonly said that around 90% of human communication is nonverbal (and only 10% is verbal). Your posture, head carriage, gait, and of course facial expressions speak volumes about your mood and motivation. Act happy and your dog will wag excitedly and present her favorite toy for you to toss. Hang your head in sorrow and she'll slink over and affectionately press her head in your lap.

Dogs are especially adept at reading facial expressions. Try this mirroring experiment: Sit facing your dog and make and exaggerated happy face. Your dog will light up as well: big grin, relaxed ears, open facial expression. Now, furrow your brow and look stern. Your dog will recoil, avert her eyes, and look guilty as charged.

A dog's understanding of body language probably explains their uncanny ability to find the one person in the room who doesn't like dogs. A fearful person tends to tense up and stare. Dogs tend to misread a fearful person's behavior as a "challenge" posture, like that of a dominant dog squaring up to an opponent. This immediately puts a dog on the defensive.

Sounds

Not only are dog's ears more sensitive than yours, but they can also hear a wider range of frequencies. If you've ever wondered how your dog seems to anticipate your arrival home, this is probably how. Their radar ears pick up the subtle sounds of cars braking, footfalls on the sidewalk, the jingle of keys. These sounds may be nearly inaudible to us.

Your dog may not understand every word you say, but she knows your tone of voice. Dogs can hear the different inflections in your voice that mean that you're happy, anxious, sad, tentative, or angry. This is why your dog hangs her head and skulks away the minute you discover the overturned kitchen trash. To an astute dog, a sound is worth a thousand words.

Smell

A dog's sense of smell is approximately one million times more sensitive than ours. Our dogs probably experience us as a composite smell "picture" as unique and complex as our visual likeness. Subtle changes in a person's scent are obvious to your pet, just as you might notice a person has lost some weight or got a new haircut.

This may be one way that dogs detect illness. When you are sick, your metabolism changes and different chemicals appear in your breath. A dog can sense this. Changes in breath chemicals may be one way that seizure-alert dogs recognize that a person is about to have a seizure.

It's sometimes said that "dogs can smell fear," and this is probably true. When you're anxious, you start to perspire lightly. It may not be visible, and you can't smell it, but a dog can. Kelly Whitney, a veterinary technician from North Attleboro, MA, describes what happened when she and her black lab encountered a stranger emerging from the woods one summer evening. "My dog is usually so friendly and loves everyone. But she clearly didn't like that man. He seemed friendly enough. But as he approached, the dog bared her teeth and gave a low growl. He backed off and went the other way. I was pretty relieved." Kelly's dog must have sensed her anxiety even though no words were exchanged. Was it something in her scent that the dog detected?

Dogs can sense our emotions because in a way, they know us better than we do!

You May Also Like These Articles: Why Dogs Wag Their Tails Autism Service Dogs Why Do Dogs Tilt Their Heads When You Talk? Do Dogs Get Jealous? Why Dogs Are Loyal How Dogs Smile How Dogs Show Affection Dogs Make the Best Matchmakers

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Have you ever felt that dogs can read people's minds? Does your dog get clingy when you're depressed or feeling sick? When you and your partner argue, does your dog go and hide? Our dogs aren't clairvoyant, but they do have an uncanny ability to sense our emotions.

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There is no official census for dogs and cats, but in 2016, the American Veterinary Medical Association estimated that 59 percent of households in the United States had a pet. Although the numbers of dogs and cats remains debatable, dogs continue to gain in popularity with 38 percent of households having at least one. Families with children are even more likely to have a dog (55 percent). With all due respect to cats, dogs have insinuated themselves into human society, forming deep emotional bonds with us and compelling us to feed and shelter them. Worldwide, the dog population is approaching one billion, the majority free-ranging.

Even though many people are convinced they know what their dog is thinking, little is actually known about what is going on in dogs' heads. This may be surprising because the field of experimental psychology had its birth with Pavlov and his salivating dogs. But as dogs gained traction as household pets, in many cases achieving the status of family members, their use as research subjects fell out of favor. In large part, this was a result of the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which set standards for the treatment of animals in research and put an end to the practice of stealing pets for experimentation.

How strange it is then that these creatures, whose nearest relatives are wolves, live with us and even share our beds, yet we know almost nothing about what they're thinking. In the last decade or so, however, the situation has begun to change, and we are in the midst of a renaissance of canine cognitive science. Research labs have sprung up around the world, and dogs participate not as involuntary subjects, but as partners in scientific discovery. This new research is beginning to shed light on what it's like to be a dog and the nature of the dog-human bond.

Dogs are Special

When scientists use animals in research, they often turn to species that are closely related to humans. "Close" is relative, as even chimpanzees and bonobos diverged from hominids at least 5 million years ago. Monkeys diverged about 25 million years ago, and to find a common ancestor with the dog-indeed with any carnivore-you have to go back 97 million years.

But this summary overlooks the very thing that makes dogs special: their evolution has been altered to make them more socially compatible with us than any other animal. They were, in fact, the first animal to have been domesticated. The million-dollar questions are when and where this happened. We know that dogs existed at the time of the first human settlements in the eastern Mediterranean. In the area known as the Fertile Crescent, their remains have been found buried alongside humans, and these have been dated to 11,000 years ago. Cats, for comparison, did not appear until 8,000 years ago and probably didn't change into their modern form until 4,000 years later. It is fair to say that only dogs were present at the dawn of human civilization.

The world these early dogs and humans inhabited looked quite different from ours. Even though the last ice age was ending, the climate was still colder than now. This probably brought wolves (an ancestor of the dog) into more frequent contact with humans as the ice sheets retreated. One theory is that wolves and humans helped each other hunt. It seems increasingly likely, though, that the more social wolves began hanging around human settlements to scavenge for leftovers. It is not hard to imagine a curious wolf, probably a juvenile, approaching the edge of a tribe. A human, maybe a child who wouldn't know any better, might leave some food on the perimeter. And a friendship is born. Eventually wolf-dogs, even if they didn't hunt, could act as sentries, alerting humans to intruders.

The evolution of cooperation is what allowed humans to dominate the planet, and at the dawn of civilization, we extended our ability to cooperate with each other to another species: dogs. Although there is no fossil record of behavior, there is increasing genetic evidence for this sort of co-evolution. In 2017, a team of researchers found a correlation between sociality in dogs with variants of several genes that had previously been identified in Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), a rare genetic disorder in humans. A core feature of WBS is hyper-sociality. When the team evaluated dogs and wolves on tasks that measured sociality, they found two canine genes in the WBS locus that are associated with this hyper-sociality in humans.

These results suggest that the key evolutionary event that turned wolves into dogs was an amplification of genes related to sociality. If that is true, dogs may hold the key to helping humans achieve what can often be a struggle: to be more social, more generous, more loving, more forgiving.

What It's Like to Be a Dog

So what is going on in a dog's head? The traditional approach, pioneered by Pavlov, is to measure a dog's behavior under different circumstances and try to infer why they do what they do. But consider a common example: teaching a dog to fetch. Some dogs, like retrievers, may do this instinctively, but others do not. Is this because the non-performers don't understand what is being asked of them? Or is it that they understand but would rather do something else? It is all too tempting to project a human explanation onto the dog, to anthropomorphize. The fetch example also highlights an important point: dogs, like people, are individuals. We must be careful in generalizing about dog findings, as there is no such thing as a generic dog. Just like there isn't a generic human.

Because of the limits of interpreting behavior, my colleagues and I turned to the use of brain imaging to figure out what dogs are really thinking. When we began ten years ago, our approach was different from most animal research. Instead of treating the dogs as research subjects, we treated them as if they were voluntary participants, affording them the same basic rights as human volunteers. We did not use sedation or restraints. Instead, we developed a training program that taught the dogs to walk into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, place their heads in custom-designed chin rests, and lie comfortably while scanning their brains ( music video). Since then, we have trained over 100 dogs for fMRI. Many of them have been participating for their entire lives and have become so used to the scanner that it is hard to get them to leave!

Before getting into how a dog's brain works, it should be understood, if obvious, that dogs do not have the same amount of neural infrastructure that humans do. As a rule, larger animals have larger brains. The encephalization quotient (EQ) accounts for the relationship between brain and body size, such that an EQ=1 means an animal has an average brain size for its body weight. Humans have an exceptionally large EQ of about seven, while dogs are a bit better than your average mammal, with an EQ of 1.2. However, we can see from an MRI of a dog brain that even though it is smaller than a human brain, all of the same basic structures are present. This is true for large regions like the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum, as well as for smaller, subcortical structures like the brainstem, hippocampus, amygdala, and basal ganglia, which have important roles in movement, memory, and emotion.

Dogs also have large olfactory systems, comprising about two percent of the total brain weight (compared to 0.03 percent in humans). Where dogs fall short is in the cortex. Apart from being smaller, there are fewer folds, which means less surface area and fewer neurons. The frontal lobe, which in humans occupies the front third of the brain, is relegated to a paltry ten percent in dogs.

The commonality of brain structures is true across all mammals. While there may be differences at a microscopic level, we all carry around the same basic hardware. Scientists and philosophers continue to debate whether a dog's experience is the same as a human's, but the commonality of brain structure suggests a certain commonality in function as well. Dogs have a hippocampus because they have to remember things, too. They have an amygdala because they get aroused and excited and scared, just like we do. They may even suffer similar mental problems (more on that later).

We have discovered many things about dogs' perceptual experience of the world, but the ones that are most interesting are in the domain of social cognition. The first question many people ask is, "Does my dog love me?" Without getting into the nuances of love, the question gets to the heart of the dog-human relationship, namely, what are a dog's motives? Is it all about food, or can dogs experience positive emotions for purely social reasons? To answer the question, we used fMRI to measure activity in a structure at the heart of the brain's reward system: the caudate nucleus.

Before scanning, we trained the dogs on a simple association between toys and rewards ( video). Each toy was held in front of the dog for ten seconds and then followed by either a treat or by their owner popping into view and praising them with, "Good dog!" The toy set up a state of expectation, which we could measure in the caudate. We found that 13 of 15 dogs had equal or greater activation for praise than for food. Is that love? We don't know, but it does show that most dogs have brain systems highly tuned to social rewards, and some even respond more to their owner's praise than food itself.

How does this social bond form? Humans, like most primates, are born ready to bond with their parents and other members of their social group. Faces carry a wealth of social information and, in the 1990s, neuroscientists discovered that primates have an area of their visual systems dedicated to processing faces, called the fusiform face area. To see if dogs have equivalent areas, we showed pictures and videos to dogs while they were in the MRI scanner. We showed faces (dog and human), objects, scenes, and scrambled images. And just as in humans, we found an area of the dog visual system that is strongly and specifically activated by faces. We called it the "dog face area." Like the praise experiment, this demonstrates that dogs have more in common with us than we realized, and that they have the basic tools to process human faces.

While we humans identify people by their appearance, dogs may rely on their sense of smell. In an early fMRI study, we presented dogs in the scanner with five scents: their owner, an unfamiliar person, another dog in the house, an unfamiliar dog, and their own scent. Human scents were obtained from underarm wipings and dog scents from the area that dogs like to smell-their butts. Although we expected to find the strongest response to the smell of other dogs, in fact we found that the scent of the owner elicited the greatest activation in the reward system of the dog's brain. This means that dogs cannot only identify us by smell, they seem to like the smell of their human best (to the extent that reward system activation means they like something.)

Auditory Processing

What about dogs' ability to understand human speech? Here, we have to be careful in what we mean by "understand." Dogs seem to understand basic commands like "sit" and, to varying degrees, "come," but that does not mean that they understand words the way humans do. We use words as symbolic placeholders. We are also very noun-centric. There are roughly ten times as many nouns as verbs, in part, because we label everything. A dog, however, may find actions more salient than names. Humans know that the word "ball" represents a whole class of objects, and its precise meaning derives from how it is used in a sentence. When a dog hears the word "ball," do they conjure up an image in their mind's eye like a human would? Maybe "ball" to a dog means the act of retrieving something, or maybe dogs pick up salient information by the tone of our voices when we say the word.

As a first step toward answering these questions, we taught some of the MRI dogs the names of two new toys. To do this, the owner would point to a stuffed animal and say its name, for example, "monkey." When the dog moved toward it, they would get a treat. Gradually, we removed the pointing. When the dog learned the name of one toy, we then introduced a second. After they learned that, they had to make the correct choice by name when both were present. Before they were deemed ready to scan, a dog had to demonstrate their knowledge by being 80 percent accurate in picking the correct toy on command, much like the famous dog, Chaser, who was reported to know the names of 1,000 toys. With the dog in the scanner, the owners spoke the names of the toys. As a control condition, they also spoke gibberish words that the dogs hadn't heard before. When this type of experiment is done in humans, real words activate language areas more than fake words, presumably because humans immediately recognize gibberish and stop trying to extract meaning from it. But in the dogs, we found the opposite. The gibberish words caused more activation in auditory areas than the real words. These areas extended beyond what is considered primary auditory cortex, and so we think they represent rudimentary language processing areas.

This tells us two important things. First, dogs can discriminate between words they have heard before and those they haven't. Second, their reaction to novel words is different from humans'. Instead of immediately recognizing that they have no meaning, dogs pay close attention to novel words, perhaps to figure out what their human is trying to communicate. This response may derive from their hyper-sociality and desire to please. (However, you can be sure that a dog will learn to ignore you if you constantly speak gibberish).

What about complex emotions, like guilt? Although many people believe their dog knows when they have done something wrong, researchers continue to debate whether dogs have the capacity to experience emotions like shame or guilt. Unfortunately, we can't use fMRI to look for a neural signature of guilt in a dog, in large part, because we haven't found one in humans. (This may seem surprising, but it has been devilishly hard to find reliable neural markers of human emotional states in general.) However, we have found evidence for something like envy in the dog's brain. In this experiment, the dog had to watch their owner feed a realistic statue of a dog. As a control condition, the owner placed food in a bucket. We found evidence for amygdala activation, which is a neural marker for arousal, when the fake dog was fed. Although not quite the same as envy, arousal might be a response to envy. This wasn't universal, though. Only the dogs who displayed aggressive traits toward other dogs had this amygdala response. Again, this highlights the individuality of dogs.

A complementary approach toward decoding emotional states uses machine learning to mine brain data obtained while a person (or dog) watches videos with different types of emotional content. Building on early results of decoding content of visual images from the brain, this new approach suggests a map of emotions in the human visual system, including states like anxiety, awe, fear, disgust, joy, and adoration. Machine learning techniques require a lot more data than conventional fMRI experiments provide-typically hours in the scanner for each subject. This would seem impossible for a dog, but with each visit to the scanner, we have found that the MRI dogs get more and more comfortable with the environment. We have several dogs who are content to lie there, watching whatever content we create for them. Preliminary results suggest that it is possible to decode brain states in some dogs. In the language study, for example, we were able to decode which word was spoken from about half of the dogs' brains. As we extend this approach to more complex stimuli, we may soon be able to decode emotional states and learn what makes them so hyper-social and lovable.

Dogs and Mental Health

If dogs have evolved to be man's best friend, is it possible that they also suffer from some of the same mental disorders as people do? Growing evidence suggests the answer is yes, and this is all the more reason to take a closer look at what is going on in dogs' heads.

Human mental illness is diagnosed largely by symptoms. According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), depression is characterized by depressed mood, diminished pleasure, slowed thinking, fatigue, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, and thoughts of death. The only objectively measurable symptom is weight change. Similarly, generalized anxiety disorder is associated with excessive anxiety and worry, restlessness, fatigue, decreased concentration, irritability, muscle aches, and sleep problems.

Dogs, of course, cannot speak, so they can't report whether they're feeling sad or anxious. Although neuroimaging may soon change things, we currently have to rely on dogs' behavior to infer what they are feeling. For example, when dogs are scared, they behave in characteristic ways, which include trembling, hiding in closets or under furniture, chewing or scratching doors to escape, pacing, barking, whining, and defecating or urinating in the house. When these occur in the context of being left alone, they are often labeled "separation anxiety." Aggression is another frequently misunderstood manifestation of emotional states in dogs. What humans label as aggression may be a normal part of a dog's behavioral repertoire, which includes barking, growling, and biting. Any dog can bite, and most will do so if provoked sufficiently. However, when they bite, dogs can cause serious injury, especially to children.

Interestingly, dogs with behavioral problems often improve when they are treated with human medications for depression and anxiety. Serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, like fluoxetine (Prozac), are some of the most commonly prescribed drugs in veterinary behavioral medicine. Others include benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants, beta-blockers, and even lithium. Indeed, the psychopharmacopeia for dogs is nearly the same as for humans. The fact that these medications work in dogs speaks to common biological mechanisms of mood regulation. And unlike humans, dogs are not susceptible to placebo effects (although their owners might be, by expecting improved behavior.)

Notwithstanding their emotional quirks, dogs are used in a variety of capacities to help people with disabilities. Service dogs are trained for specific tasks that a person cannot do by themselves, which might include picking up items, opening doors, and alerting to sounds. A psychiatric service dog might be trained to detect the onset of psychiatric episodes, or to turn on lights for someone with post-traumatic stress disorder. In contrast, emotional support dogs are not trained for specific tasks, but used for companionship, to alleviate loneliness, and to aid in the treatment of depression and anxiety.

While service dogs are afforded certain protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act, emotional support animals are not (although they may be covered by other laws, like the Fair Housing Act and Air Carrier Access Act.) Because service dogs often require extensive training, the cost may be prohibitive for many people, up to $50,000. Most dogs are not cut out for this kind of work, so there is a need to identify those that are and not waste resources training those who will not be good service dogs. Brain imaging may play a role here. In a study of 50 dogs-in-training, we were able to predict with 91 percent accuracy whether a dog would or would not graduate service dog training. In particular, we found that amygdala activation was negatively correlated with success, suggesting that dogs that are prone to arousal-either because they are anxious or simply want to play-are not good candidates for service dogs.

It is worth keeping in mind, however, that dogs are not simply treatments to be prescribed for various conditions. Like people, dogs have a wide variety of skills and personalities. And while there are some differences between breeds in any particular personality trait, there seems to be as much variability within a breed. The key to a strong dog-human bond is in the match between dog and human, but this may be as hard to predict as the match between two people. Future research, both with brain imaging and other physiological measures, may soon shed light on the canine side of the equation.

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Decoding the Canine Mind | Dana Foundation

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There is no official census for dogs and cats, but in 2016, the American Veterinary Medical Association estimated that 59 percent of households in the United States had a pet. Although the numbers of dogs and cats remains debatable, dogs continue to gain in popularity with 38 percent of households having at least one.

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You may think your dog is excited at the sight of your face, but research published Monday suggests that unfortunately, she probably isn't.

The study, in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that dogs aren't wired to focus on human faces. What does make their brains spark is the glimpse of another dog. The sight of a human? Not so much.

Through MRI scans of humans and dogs watching videos - of both humans and dogs - Hungarian scientists learned that while humans have a specialized brain region that lights up when a face comes into view, dogs do not. Both dogs and humans, however, do have a brain region that sparks when a member of the same species comes into view.

"Faces are central to human visual communication ... and human brains are also specialized for faces," study co-author Attila Andics, an animal behavior researcher at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, said in an email. But that doesn't appear to be the case for man's best friend.

Dogs do pay attention to human faces, Andics, said. "They read emotions from faces and they can recognize people from the face alone, but other bodily signals seem to be similarly informative to them."

In other words, dogs may notice our faces, and even the expressions on them, but they use all sorts of other information, such as body language and voice cues, to tell what we are up to. Humans, on the other hand, value most what they see on a face.

To see if humans and dogs processed faces the same way, Andics and his colleagues recruited 30 humans and 20 dogs who were family pets. In the experiment, each human and each dog lay in an MRI machine while shown a series of two-second videos: a dog face, the back of a dog's head, a human face and the back of a human head. The order in which thoe videos were shown varied with each run.

Getting a dog to lay still in a loud MRI scanner is a challenge in and of itself.

"They go through a several months-long training," Andics said. The dogs are taught that "they cannot move during measurements, even a little." He added that the "trained dogs are happy volunteers in these experiments, not forced or restrained in any way. They can leave the scanner any time if they want."

When they analyzed the brain scans, the researchers found visual areas of the humans' brains lit up far more when a human face was shown compared to the back of a head. Also human brains were more active when a video of a person played than one of a dog. When it came to the dogs, brain activity didn't change whether a face or the back of a head was viewed. When videos showed a dog, the dogs' brains were more active than when videos showed a human.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the study's results make sense, said Dr. 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.

"Mother Nature will not invest in something that is not relevant to survival, either in dog-to-dog or even wolf-to-wolf interactions," said Siracusa, who was not involved with the new study. "They use other ways of communicating such as ear position - which can be seen from the front and from behind. The ear position will tell about the mood of the dog. We humans don't move our ears."

Dogs also use chemical communication much more than humans do, he said. The scent of another dog will reveal whether that dog might be of interest.

But dogs may have evolved to pay attention to human faces because they've also evolved to depend on humans, Siracusa said. "They try to understand from facial expressions what humans want," he added. "How likely is it they are going to get something to eat rather than be punished. They are like toddlers."

Dr. Katherine Houpt also wasn't surprised by the new findings. "We always look at people's faces, but dogs look at all of us," said Houpt, a professor emeritus at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. "Dogs have other ways of [evaluating] people."

Experiments have shown that dogs will be less likely to go to a person who has demonstrated selfish behavior, such as refusing to help someone open a jar or share some cookies, said Houpt, who was not involved with the Hungarian study.

But for those feeling sad about the findings, Houpt offered words of reassurance: "Your dog loves all of you, not just your pretty face."

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Your dog may love you, but doesn't love the sight of your face, study finds

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You may think your dog is excited at the sight of your face, but research published Monday suggests that unfortunately, she probably isn't. The study, in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that dogs aren't wired to focus on human faces. What does make their brains spark is the glimpse of another dog.

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If you are like most pet owners, there's a good chance you've wondered if your dog really can recognize your face, or if they just know your smell and the sounds associated with you coming in the door.

Believe it or not, but your dog most certainly can recognize your face! For animals that live in packs, facial recognition is extremely important. In years past it was thought that only humans and primates could recognize specific faces, but new research indicates otherwise. In fact, this is a highly-developed skill that our dogs also possess, which makes perfect sense, if you ask us.

Facial recognition is an important part of the dog-owner relationship, as eye contact is crucial to both trust and training. Dogs are much more likely to listen to people with whom they have an established relationship and are willing to make eye contact with, which is often those whose face they recognize.

Furthermore, dogs are so in tune with facial cues that they often look to their owner's faces for clues on what they should be doing.

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If you are like most pet owners, there's a good chance you've wondered if your dog really can recognize your face, or if they just know your smell and the sounds associated with you coming in the door. Believe it or not, but your dog most certainly can recognize your face!

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As a new pet parent, it's difficult to imagine life before your amazing furry friend. But do you ever wonder if your pup feels the same way about life with you? Do dogs remember their owners from past homes? Do dogs have memories, even?

There's still research to be done on just how much dogs remember, but here's a look at what's known today.

Do Dogs Have Memories?

It's proven that dogs have memories, but researchers don't quite know the specifics yet, including to what extent dogs remember things.

"There are many stories about the memory of dogs, but only a few experiments have been done," said Ádám Miklósi, head of the ethology department at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, in an article for Dog Fancy.

The good news is that studies about dogs' memories are underway, including at the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University, where researchers are looking at the following questions: "What cognitive strategies do dogs use when navigating or remembering events? Do all dogs navigate and remember things in a similar way? Are there systematic breed differences?" Any of these questions could lead to compelling discoveries.

Dog Memory Types

With a lack of empirical evidence regarding how a dog's brain "remembers" things, when faced with a question like "Do dogs remember their owners?" a good follow-up question is, "How do we even know?" Luckily, dogs are great test subjects (Sit? Sure! Fetch? You bet!), which allows experts to extrapolate information based on a dog's behavioral patterns.

We know that dogs can be smart, but not enough research has been done to determine whether or not memory capacity differs from one dog breed to another. Generally speaking, dogs exhibit varied types of memory cognition, including the following.

Memory Span

Dogs have a very short short-term memory. "Dogs forget an event within two minutes," reported National Geographic, citing a 2014 study performed on various animals from rats to bees. Other animals have long-term memories, such as dolphins, but dogs don't seem to have a long-term memory that lasts much beyond those two minutes.

Associative and Episodic Memory

Despite their memory span shortcomings, dogs demonstrate strength in other types of memory, including associative and episodic memory.

Associative memory is the brain's way of creating a relationship between two things. It can be difficult to get a cat into their pet carrier, for example, because they associate the carrier with going to the veterinarian's office. A dog sees their leash and knows it's time for a walk.

Episodic memory is the remembrance of something that has happened to you personally and is linked to self-awareness.

Until recently, it was thought that only humans and a few animals had episodic memories. Some research suggested that dogs sort of have that ability, but a groundbreaking study in Current Biology provided strong "evidence for episodic-like memory" in dogs. The team trained dogs to the point that instead of saying "lie down," the researcher would say "do it" and the dog would obey.

Anecdotally, training dogs for advanced cognition may not be too far off. Renowned psychologist and dog author Dr. Stanley Coren wrote for Psychology Today that he once interviewed a man who, having lost his short-term memory due to a brain injury as a child, relied on a "memory assistance dog" to help with episodic "new memories" such as where he parked his car. Pretty exciting stuff.

Do Dogs Remember Their Owners?

These advancements support the idea that adopted dogs may remember their previous owners, but how they remember them is still uncertain. A dog who lived in unhappy circumstances, for example, may associate negative emotions or anxious behavior with certain objects or locations. And we definitely know that dogs miss their humans when people leave the house - just look at how happy they get when you walk through that front door!

But this doesn't mean your new pup is pining for another family. As long as you provide a loving and nurturing environment, your new dog will be happy to focus on their present and enjoy being in their forever home.

Contributor Bio
Christine O'Brien

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As a new pet parent, it's difficult to imagine life before your amazing furry friend. But do you ever wonder if your pup feels the same way about life with you? Do dogs remember their owners from past homes? Do dogs have memories, even?