You love your dog. Does your dog love you back?

Rick Allen is an obedience specialist who, unsurprisingly, identifies as a dog lover. But there’s one moment in particular that stands out from him – a moment when, he believes, a dog subtly let him know that love is going both ways.

“I ran into my house a few years ago while I was with Jack, a five-year-old ‘Heinz 57’ black and white dog mix that I adopted a few years ago,” Allen told Salon by e-mail. Allen “broke his ankle” while outside. Injured, he then waited in the alley for his daughter to come and help him.

“Jack was sitting next to me with his paw draped over the same leg of the foot I had injured until she arrived,” he said.

In soliciting interviews for this story, on whether dogs can feel ‘love’ as we know it, many subjects described similar experiences – those mystical moments where, based on the soul in l A dog’s eye or similar paw hug, humans felt completely certain that their dogs loved them.

Jean Alfieri, a self-proclaimed “dog fan“, is an award-winning author who wrote a beloved dog tale,” Zuggy the Rescue Pug. “She recalled the moment she befriended Wyatt Wyatt,” a small dog that fills the room with her big boisterous personality “in her mind that Wyatt had chosen her.

“I had gone to the Humane Society looking for a specific breed – not his,” Alfieri told Salon via email. “Still, he sat proudly in the passenger seat next to me on the way home. An adorable twenty-five pound piece of pug! Her tongue was sticking out of her mouth. look out the window to admire the view of the desert. More often, he looked at me, with an undeniable admiration that I knew to be out of place. It was the same look he gave me as he sat in his kennel.

It was the kennel moment where she and the pug connected through their eyes.

“When he turned those eyes to me, my heart melted,” Alfieri explained. “Forget he was a ‘senior’ puppy with some health issues. For us it was love at first sight.” Alfieri added that she and her husband adopted senior dogs “or vintage puppies, as we prefer to call them”.

Despite anecdotal experiences like these, scientists haven’t always been so sure whether dogs can feel love. 17th century French philosopher René Descartes sadly vivisected dogs because he believed that only human beings could have a soul. This prompted an 18th century French Enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire, to take up about a century later: “Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines, has nature arranged for this animal? all the machinery of feelings only in order to have any at all? ”

Want more health and science articles in your inbox? Subscribe to the show’s weekly newsletter The vulgar scientist.

Since then, the Descartes-Voltaire debate has tormented philosophers. One would think that Descartes, taking the less idealistic point of view in this situation, would end up being right by animal behaviorists over the following centuries. Ultimately, however, science ended up siding with Voltaire.

“Dogs have a surge of endorphins and serotonin when they bond and play with us, and the same happens to us too,” Dr Linda Simon, veterinarian and veterinarian consultant at Five barks‌, Salon said by email. “This strengthening of the relationship is mutually beneficial and leads to a strong bond.”

As Simon pointed out, dogs have co-evolved with humans for thousands of years, forming an alliance with us as we realized that teaming up could bring benefits to both species, namely food.

“Dogs are no fool and have long realized that it pays to be ‘man’s best friend’,” Simon wrote. “In return for scraps of meat and shelter, the ancient dogs protected us from predators, guarded our livestock, and offered companionship. This relationship had mutual benefits and was therefore destined to be successful from the start. Naturally, over time. time, the bond between man and dog strengthened. “

She pointed to an example that scientists have noticed about the human-dog relationship: While most animals avoid eye contact with humans and shy away from us when stressed, “our dogs seek out our eye contact and shy away from us. look to us for what to do when they are stressed. “Their trust and love for us, and vice versa, is embedded in our DNA – and theirs.

“Several neuroimaging studies have confirmed that dogs are wired to listen to us, our voices and our feelings,” Simon explained. “In fact, an owner’s scent can trigger the dog’s ‘reward center’ in the brain, making it feel happy and well-being.”

An opponent might answer all of this by claiming that the above interactions involve personal interest and involve chemical interactions. As much as this would be true of dogs, however, it would also encompass all living creatures capable of affection. It also wouldn’t explain the moments of canine compassion and selflessness. If “love” is indeed nothing more than a chemical cocktail, then it is as good for humans as it is for dogs.

Yet the emotional connection between dogs and humans extends to other emotions as well. A 2019 study found that “long-term” stress levels were “in sync” between dogs and their owners. The researchers studied the levels of cortisol in the hair follicles of dogs and compared them to those of humans.

“The traits of the human personality [like] neuroticism, awareness and openness significantly affected cortisol levels in dog hair, ”the researchers wrote in Scientific reports. “Therefore, we suggest that dogs, to a large extent, reflect the stress level of their owners.”

The hormone oxytocin, often referred to as the “love hormone”, helps strengthen the bonds between humans and other humans, especially family members. In 2015, Japanese researchers discovered that oxytocin increases when humans and their dogs interact, and especially when they make eye contact. The same effect has not been seen in wolves, even when wolves were bred by humans. This suggests that dogs have evolved specifically to feel attached to us.

In other words: the feeling is mutual.