They don’t have great chat and we don’t like the same TV shows or food. Actually, they like our food; we don’t like theirs. Yet anyone with a dog knows the deep primal love we feel for them. It feels like forces stronger than both species are pulling us together.
In hopes of uncovering where this intense human-dog connection came from, I went straight to renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. By which I mean I watched half of episode one of his 2014 TV show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.
Whilst poking a campfire with a stick, the great man explains that humans have been friendly with dogs longer than any other animal. At least 30,000 years. Animals with hooves are relatively new to us, and we still don’t like rats.
Before that, wolves were a big problem. They would sneak up at night and run off with our kids, munch on anyone who strayed from the tribe and scare us in the dark with their creepy howling. For our part, if we saw a wolf, we would immediately try and kill it with sticks and rocks. It turns out wolves hate a sharpened bit of wood through the ribs.
Dogs got cuter, their eyes got bigger and closer together, and the corners of their mouths turned up to imitate our smiling.
Relations were poor until a few wolves were born with a strange mutation. They didn’t fear humans. They left their packs and sat down by our fires. The first of them got slaughtered but slowly, things lightened up. We started to feed them. In return, all they had to do was bark loudly if any real wolves showed up.
It was an excellent set-up for both sides. So much so that the friendly wolves started to evolve to please us. They evolved to look like our babies. They got cuter, their eyes got bigger and closer together, and the corners of their mouths turned up to imitate our smiling.
Before you know it, they weren’t wolves anymore; they were dogs, and we loved them. It was a match made in heaven.
So we set about breeding them into a million different types. Sometimes we would cook and eat them, but mostly, they were our hunting allies, companions and friends.
The bond was so advantageous that the love became hard-wired.
American neuroscientist Dr Andrew D. Huberman discusses the positive effects of dogs on his podcast The Science of Happiness. He references a 2018 scientific paper, The Influence of Interactions with Dogs on Affect, Anxiety, and Arousal in Children.
The findings line up with the way my two sons behave. Every time they see Colin, they light up and yell his name. They play fight, scratch his neck or chase him around the house.
Huberman raises other human studies that conclude hanging with dogs increases feelings of wellbeing in people of all ages. Even a tiny interaction makes us feel better. You don’t even have to know the dog; a pat on the street is enough to cheer us up.
Humans hanging with dogs increases feelings of well-being in people of all ages.
Dr Huberman tells a story. He couldn’t own a dog while working in a lab. So he started a business walking them for free. The neuroscientist understood the positive effects of K9 time were worth more than money.
As I write this, my dog Colin sits beside me on the couch. I can feel his primal goodwill beaming deep into my soul.
As soon as I finish this article, I’ll grab his cheeks, look him square in the eyes and whisper, “walk”. Colin will go loose. He’ll sprint around the house looking for his lead.
He’s always happy to see me and ready to do what I want. In return, I’ll do anything for him, including paying $100 a week for anti-itchiness medicine. It’s a pattern of human-dog love that stretches back 1500 generations.
Simply put, we are a couple of species that really get along. On behalf of all humans, I’d like to say to our best friends, “good dog, what a good dog, awwww you are such a goooooood dog. I love you!”
