Prepare to be heartbroken, guys.
We asked our colleagues for their pressing canine questions, and then put them to dog expert and author of In Defence of Dogs (Penguin, 2011) John Bradshaw to get some answers. Here's what he told us.
"Do dogs get sad when their owners go to work and they're at home alone?"
It's bad news for dog owners who have to leave their pup at home during the day.
"They do get sad," says Bradshaw. "Dogs are very attached to humans. It's the way they live alongside us, by watching us and trying to work out all the time what we're thinking and what we're doing. When we're not there, they feel disoriented and anxious."
Different dogs will express this in different ways – Border collies tend to pace around because they're quite active, whereas Labradors are more likely to chew on things. "Each dog has a different way of expressing its distress – some will pace, some will howl, some will bark, some will scratch at the door or dig in the sofa," says Bradshaw.
Even if your dog just curls up and goes to sleep while you're out, seemingly peacefully, that doesn't mean they're not stressed.
In an experiment Bradshaw ran with Channel 4, he filmed dogs that were left at home during the day to see what they did. Dogs that didn't look stressed during the time their owner was out still had high levels of stress hormone in their urine. "It shows that the dog has come to learn there's nothing it can actually do to make the owner come back, but it's anxious and stressed all the time the owner's out," he says.
But all hope is not lost, because there's a training scheme, developed by Bradshaw and available from the RSPCA website, you can use to help your dog feel more at ease when you're not around.
Chase-clark / Getty Images
"Is there a scientific reason why puppies do that head tilt thing?"
"It's a natural piece of dog behaviour," says Bradshaw. Sometimes they do it to hear better, but puppies also tilt their head to the side as they approach other puppies to indicate that they're playing.
Bradshaw says that dogs would probably grow out of tilting their head during play, but we could be reinforcing the behaviour by rewarding them for it.
"All dogs will repeat anything that they think will get our attention, particularly if it's the kind of attention they like," he says. "And so puppies learn quite early on that people make a fuss of them after they've done it, and so they'll keep doing it right the way through into adulthood."
Diego_cervo / Getty Images
"Do working dogs like guide dogs get stressed at work?"
"A lot of the stress in a dog's life comes from being outside of their comfort zone as far as what they're expecting to happen next," says Bradshaw. "That's why puppy-farmed puppies are constantly stressed, because early on they did not learn about the world."
But guide dogs get a lot of training to deal with situations they'll come across while at work. "Teaching a service dog what to do when they encounter something that scares them is part of the training for guide dogs," says Bradshaw.
So, as long as they've had the right training and get plenty of breaks, a service dog is actually much less likely to get stressed than any other dog.
Bobbymn / Getty Images
from BuzzFeed - Kelly Oakes http://ift.tt/2gwipCs
