Dogs Showing Emotions

Studies have concluded and owners have known forever, that dogs have and express many of the emotions that humans do.  Dogs can feel and express:

Sadness

Being scared

Feeling nervous

Feeling confused

Feeling inner happiness

Being content

Feeling love (at the very least in the form of extreme devotion, loyalty and bonding with their owner/s)

A Maltese can cry; this is proven clinically.  A dog will cry under several circumstances such as:

• When feeling pain (dogs in labor often cry persistently)

• When hit or injured by a human or other dog

• When sad (from neglect or separation anxiety)  One of the dog rescues we are associated with will never forget one dog that they rescued who was ill and thrown into a garage for weeks.  Neighbors, finally hearing the dog’s cries, were able to alert police.
  

An owner must keep in mind that their Maltese does and will feel these emotions.  A Maltese should be treated as important members of the family.  While an owner should not over-spoil their Maltese, care should be taken to keep their Maltese happy, just as a child would be taken care of.

This brings us to a very interesting question:  Does a Maltese smile?  Is a Maltese capable of smiling?  And this brings us to a very interesting answer!  Charles Darwin who studies emotions of both human and canine came to a conclusion regarding this matter.  After much research, he contended that dogs can smile.  In doing so, they will retract their upper lip, which exposing the top canine teeth.

This action is also done when a dog is growling; however the dog’s behavior did not point to a state of aggression and the environment did not provide one; therefore he concluded that a Maltese, or other dog breed can and does indeed smile!

Patricia Simonet, a canine researcher from Nevada, USA studied smiles and even laughter in dogs.  She and her team concluded that dogs do laugh; although differently than humans, of course.  Her studies showed that dogs will exhibit certain and particular breathy exhalations that are the equivalent to human laughter!  Using high tech microphones, dogs were recorded during play.  Careful examination of the dog’s sounds show that one certain frequency of breathing was displayed at certain time during play and was quite different that the heavier breathing done due to exercise.  Research is still being done to make more discoveries about this.

Dogs, do however show joy in many ways, such as body language and barking.  And the next time you think you see your Maltese grinning at you or chuckling, you may just be right!