Trust between a dog and an owner is built from an early age and can become a very strong bond.
Trust your dog, his judgment takes only a moment – 2/3 of his brain works through the sense of smell.
The nose is one of the most important organs for a dog. If you have been wondering because your pet can spend his whole walk with his snout stuck in an extremely interesting thorn or hawthorn, it is because suffocation is his key need. 2/3 of his brain works through the sense of smell.
Dogs can smell fear, but can they smell the truth? It turns out that they are quite good at capturing human behavior. Their owners know it from experience, even when they do not have a scientific explanation for why, various studies around the world show it.
A team led by Akiko Takaoka of Kyoto University conducted a study that found that dogs probably sensed whether or not the person against them could be trusted.
During the experiment at a Japanese university, the team worked with 34 hairy people, showing them a container full of food. They run to him and find that there is a whole treasure with prizes inside. The next time, however, the container is empty, and when the dogs carry out a command to reach it, they find this fact quite disappointing for them. In the third attempt, when the team makes each of the dogs go back to the container, they all refuse – simply because they know that there is no food and “do not lie” so easily. Dogs have a more complex social intelligence than we thought. This social intelligence has evolved selectively in their long history with humans, ”says Takaoka, who is also surprised that animals decide quickly whether or not a reliable person stands against them.
This is just one example of why the world of the dog can serve as a textbook for us on how to judge people or at least guide us. Quite often their reaction is more revealing and instantaneous, pet owners know from experience and without quoting world research. Wise people advise that we should trust our dog and this turns out to be an extremely valuable life lesson.
Man’s best friend notices people who are in some way unfriendly to his owner and then unequivocally shows this with their behavior.
One explanation is that dogs can smell chemical changes in people’s pheromones that show they have bad intentions, signaling to the dog that they are “bad.”
And maybe that’s why our four-legged friends, apart from breaking our nerves, because they don’t want to move for 5 minutes, sniffing some grass, and we are late for work and counting the seconds, it is good to note that sometimes only one a moment is enough for them to judge what kind of person is standing against us.
The simple examples that illustrate this are everyday life for dog owners. Each of them can tell you that it often happens that their dogs like a passer-by and want to sniff him to get to know each other, and why not pet them. When our pet likes a cute little child or a smiling young man who enjoys passing him on the street, we have no doubt that the sympathy is mutual, they say.
However, there are other cases in which the dog, even calm and socialized, reacts sharply to people who want to touch him, smiling in return. Owners can then keep in mind that their dog’s reaction is not accidental. Over time, if contact with these people is more frequent – for example, some of the neighbors, it is likely to find out why our dog warned us.
If we are talking about dog breeds that are selected for protection and have more pronounced guardian traits, then it is even easier to read what they tell us. They react sharply to people who stand against us and have bad intentions.
Whether they really smell changes in our brain, whether they sense our aura or have other mechanisms that tell them what we are, one thing is for sure – dogs have been our constant companions for centuries. And just as they learn from us and rely on us, so we can learn to trust them. Usually dogs turn out to be right, even if we establish this fact after a long time. It takes a few moments to judge them, and we all know people who need years to see if they can trust and rely on someone.
