My Dog’s Feelings Are Hurt

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214 – October, 2025

By Chris Robinson

When you’ve been gone and come home, does your dog dance around wagging his or her tail? Or, has your dog growled when another dog approached him or her? We interpret these actions as the dog being happy to see us or that they love to see us in the first situation, and that Fido doesn’t like the approaching dog in the second. In both situations, the emotional state of our dogs is pretty obvious. But the existence of emotions in dogs has long been a subject of controversy and, in fact–in some areas of research–it still is controversial.

In times long ago, dogs were thought to have very rich mental lives with feelings much like humans. They were even thought to have the ability to understand human language almost as well as people. But then science began to rise, and things changed. Scientists learned that living things were governed by systems that followed certain rules.

The chief proponent of this theory was the French philosopher and scientist Rene Descartes. He suggested that animals, including dogs, were just some sort of machine. In this belief, he had a powerful ally–religions. Church scholars said that people have souls and they said that since humans have feelings and consciousness, that proved that unlike animals, humans had a divine spark. Animals, on the other hand, because they lacked this divine spark, did not have the ability to experience true feelings–according to the church people.

Much science in Descartes’ era was being done at church schools and universities, so it is unsurprising that researchers would deny the existence of emotions in dogs. If they suggested that an animal such as a dog might have a soul or consciousness, it would be in direct opposition to church doctrine and that would create problems for the scientists.

Click here to read the complete article
214 – October, 2025

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