While I sat through the drips my dog was receiving as treatment for its acute liver failure, trying to figure out what could have gotten her so sick, I wondered whether it was worth the efforts. Would force feeding and drips help her pull through her medical ordeal or was I stretching the boundaries between human and animal existence a little too far.
I love dogs, and often find myself in the same predicament as to what extent do I go to save my dog’s life. There are hundreds of starving children who need this kind of medical attention and I feel my conscience prick me, but those who are dog owners and keep them as pets will understand exactly how I feel.
There is something special about having a dog as a pet. Your own unique experience will have taught you that when you come home from a rather difficult and tiring day, the warm welcome you receive from your pet is worth a million denominations of any currency. The smile that lights up your face, an automatic response, is never forced nor is it pretend, but a sincere warmth that spreads through your being every time your dog laps up to welcome you.
While most of us are aware of the multitude of benefits our pet showers on us, there are many which are subtle which the world of science is still exploring to recognize this special relationship between dogs and humans.
If you are a dog owner, you will also know that each of your dogs have their own unique personalities, temperaments and devotions. Experts suggest that they have picked up these human like traits during their evolution from wolves across more than 12,000 years.
Research studies indicate that dogs can read facial expressions, communicate jealousy, display empathy and also react to others in the same way their human owner does. But we don’t need research to confirm this, we all have our narratives and experiences.
Dogs have evolved to attune to their human friend. They understand words even with no comprehension of human language. They can learn to take orders and be trained to sit, roll, fetch and play dead on command. They are more receptive to our moods and mannerism than we might want to accept. They know when to be happy around us and when they should just let you be.
Laurie Santos, Director of Yale Comparative Cognition Laboratory explains this phenomenon as mirroring that has evolved by paying close attention to humans, getting along with us and tolerating us, dogs have learn to mirror our own traits across ages.
Researchers in Vienna found that dogs could tell whether a person was happy or angry just by looking at their owner’s face. However, more recent research findings from a team of animal behaviour experts and psychologists at the University of Lincoln, UK, and University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, which are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters are now suggesting that such human like behavior response in dogs is because dogs can form abstract mental representations of positive and negative emotional states.
They are not simply displaying learned behaviours when reacting to the expressions of people and other dogs but they are responding. When they look into your eyes dogs are able to thus make conclusive perceptions. Dogs have the ability to integrate two different sources of sensory information into a coherent perception of emotion. This cognitive ability has until now only been evidenced in primates and the capacity to do this across species only seen in humans.
Getting the honor of being titled as man’s best friend, the dog has taken this role further by helping humans deal with various physical and mental health problems including depression, fatigue and stress related disorders.
This particular study has been able to explain the ‘how’ of the therapeutic benefits of having a dog as a pet. The basic human need to touch is being fulfilled by the dog unconditionally. Their responses are genuine. Playing with a dog can elevate levels of serotonin and dopamine, which calm and relax. Thus when your dog jumps and wags its tail with joy and allows you to hug it, this genuine relationship releases the happy hormones that can rapidly calm and soothe you when you are stressed or anxious
For reasons such as these, the American Heart Association has linked the ownership of pets, especially dogs, with a reduced risk for heart disease and greater longevity. Pet owners show lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels than those without pets and Heart attack patients with dog pets survive longer than those without. Dogs are being used to ease depression and help elderly cope with loneliness.
Experiments that have used dogs to calm juvenile delinquents and even hardened criminals in prison have shown long-term changes in their behavior after interacting with dogs, many of them experiencing mutual affection for the first time.
While I ease my conscience, I recall the number of times my dog has saved me from what might have been otherwise dangerous situations, of snake alerts and unwelcome strangers. Just the presence of my four legged friend gives me a sense of confidence, so I stretch the limit a little further and let go.
