Anne Burrows with her dog Ruby at her home in Ben Avon, Pennsylvania, the United States, recently. Photo: TNS
Below are some of Burrows’ insights into the special bond that dogs and humans share, and how dogs have evolved to better communicate with their human caregivers. So there is this physiological response that both dogs and humans have when we gaze into each other’s eyes.Tens of thousands of years of bonding. Nobody really knows why we domesticated dogs. It has to have been mutually beneficial. There are theories. [Maybe] wolf packs and humans engaged in cooperative hunting. [Maybe] wolf packs followed humans around and ate the carcasses that humans butchered.
The inner corners of the dog’s eyes go up and the dog looks sad. Anytime my dog does that to me I drop what I’m doing to see what she wants. Somehow humans selected for that behaviour during the process of dog domestication, so many dogs do that now. Somehow dogs that make that face are able to elicit a caregiver response from their humans.