Being such a dog lover I thought I could express my true feelings on this blog and talk about the relationship and love a dog has for it’s owner and vis versa. For the 18 years I have been alive there hasn’t been a single day where my family hasn’t owned a dog. A dog to me is literally part of my family. My dog right now I consider him like a brother to me and I truly think he feels the same way.

I took this picture of my dog, Romeo.

According to this study  done by Swedish and Danish researchers dogs can have a positive relationship with there owners if the owner has a positive attitude toward the dog. Researches put it to the test with 20 dogs and their owners. They divided them up into three categories. One, was the interactions between the owner and the dog. Two, how close the dog and owner are to each other. Lastly three, the investment the owner was putting into the dog. The researchers had discovered that dogs who initiate contact with their owner, the owner showed more interaction with their dog. If the owner initiated contact with the dog, the dog was less likely to play on it’s own. Owners who seemed to have a better relationship with their dogs showed to have higher levels of Oxytocin in their urine.

After reading that article and understanding the study that they tested I found their study to be slightly misleading and I think it had many flaws in it. If you are running a study for the relationship between a dog and a human you can’t test it on only 20 humans and dogs. You need to have a larger sample size for more accurate results. Another thing that made me question this study is they type of dog that they are testing. Certain breeds of dogs have different traits and emotions just like us humans do. Some dogs are more loving than others. If there was a larger field with a larger variety of dogs I think the results could’ve have been more accurate and more concise.

In another article I found written by John Bradshaw Ph.D., due to the fact that they are evolved from wolves which is avery intelligent species, dogs have transitioned well over generations to be domesticated animals. Personally I think that dogs have such a close relationship with their owner because of the dependency they have for us. When we pick up the dog from the kennel on the first day, the owners of that dog for the next 10-15 years has such a responsibility to take care of the dog. Although a dog is only in your life for a short period of time in the grand scheme of things you are the dogs whole life. The owner of a dog has been there for them from the beginning to the end.

Dogs that are domesticated and that live in the house with us are dependent on us to take them to the bathroom, feed them, and keep them healthy. Without those three things dogs wouldn’t be able to survive and we as the owners are the only people who can do that for them. Dogs, quickly learn who is there for them supplying them with what they need. This makes dogs feel comfortable with their owner and quickly form a relationship with them. I feel that since the owner supplies the dogs with the necessities for them to live, dogs will die for their owners because that is their nature.

In another article I found researchers in Japan have found that dog owners have a bonding hormone oxytocin which is responsible for the carrying of a baby in them which mothers have when they look at their children.  The researchers in Japan preformed a test where they sprayed the hormone Oxytocin up the dogs nose and found that the female dogs starred at their owner longer than usual. Researchers had also found that that the longer the dogs starred at the owner, the owners oxytocin levels were raised. Similar to the article I cited above, these researchers also think that because dogs are decedents of wolves they are more domesticated because wolves use to scavage leftovers that humans left which made them dependent on humans many years ago.

Second picture found here.

Third picture found here.