Dogs can smell fear, so surely they must be able to smell other emotions as well.
Some days I have to live my life around the radar, waiting for a chance when it isn’t raining to take the dogs out. Today was one of those days. After I got home after being gone about 3 hours, I took them out. Lola did nothing. No biggie, I put her back in her crate & took my shower.
Just as I was about to take them back out, it poured. By this point I could watch her, so we just waited it out. When it stopped raining, I took them back out. By now it had been 6 hours since she’d last pee’d (a long time for a little dog).
There was a dog outside the yard, which of course set them off, but I calmed them down after a while & Lola went off to circle, circle, circle . . . and do nothing. I was annoyed. It’s one of those days when there’s no telling when it’s going to pour again.
I walked away from her, but she obviously knew I was annoyed at her, although she just as obviously couldn’t figure out why. I had my back turned to her, so she wasn’t getting a whole lot of physical clues. Still, she clearly knew I wasn’t happy with her. I have to believe that we must give off different scents with different moods.
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July 27th, 2007 at 1:35 am
She may not have been getting any facial cues, but I’m sure she was picking up lots of whole body cues from the general tenseness of your muscles, set of your posture, and so forth. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are scents they can detect too, but dogs and cats are also much more about reading whole body language, and probably pick up much subtler cues than we realize!
July 27th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Judy, I find this to be true too. Both my dogs pick up human emotions with incredible accuracy.