Scientists Now Think That Your Dog Secretly Despises You Every Time You Try To Hug Him

SeattlePI – In an article published earlier this month in Psychology Today, Dr. Stanley Coren, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia who frequently writes about canine behaviors, argues that dogs almost always exhibit cues of discomfort or stress when they are being hugged or embraced by humans.

Coren examined 250 random photographs of people (both adults and children) hugging dogs, taking note of the animal’s appearance and expression in each picture. As he says, in a large majority of the photos, the animals’ body language doesn’t lie: they do not like being hugged. In most pictures, the dogs show signs like eye contact avoidance or lowered ears, generally suggesting they are feeling stressed out by the affection.

“In all, 81.6% of the photographs researchers scored showed dogs who were giving off at least one sign of discomfort, stress, or anxiety,” [Coren writes.] “Only 7.6% of the photographs could rate as showing dogs that were comfortable with being hugged. The remaining 10.8% of the dogs either were showing neutral or ambiguous responses to this form of physical contact.”

Maybe it’s just me since I didn’t grow up with dogs but then went in headfirst and got two after moving out of a place with an ex-girlfriend (who was allergic to dogs, definitely no spitefulness involved, no sir), but dogs are so much more insanely complicated than I thought. Growing up I remember my parents not wanting animals at all but still dropping the “They’re a lot of responsibility” line and while that’s true, I’m fine with the “you’ve got to feed and walk them and pick up their shit” parts. But it’s all these extra layers of information with how dogs process things and their complicated emotions and it seems like there’s still so much we don’t know about dogs even though they’ve been hanging around with us for centuries.

My older dog Penny is six years old next month and is kind of a pain in the ass because she’s high energy but parts pit and hound so she had a destructive few years a result. Besides needing to rip apart any toy she comes across, she used to chew on the floorboards of the walls, even chewed on some stairs in a house I rented because she got separation anxiety when I had to stop working from home and go into an office. I saw a ton of trainers, they had no clue what to do with her, recommended longer walks, nothing worked. Then I finally saw a behavioral expert trainer who met her, basically punked her out like Cesar Milan for half an hour, then was like “Yeah she just needs to play fetch once a day to make her feel more accomplished and get her energy out.” And sure as shit, we started playing fetch just about daily and she stopped being an adorable destructive monster. And it took like five trainers meeting her to throw out something I could have picked up from Air Bud.

Overall it just seems like we need to get our shit together with dogs. More research should be invested here given how much time we as a society spend with them. A few more guidelines on how to keep them happy and not destroying/shitting on various things for all of us all I ask. In return, I’ll stop forcing myself into hugs with dogs (unless for photos with the express purpose of trying to get it in, my research says they can live with the sacrifice for the greater good):

(Dog longing for the sweet embrace of death photo by Shutterstock)