Another study showed that dogs’ brain activity went through the roof when they listened to happy sounds, like praise. The same study also showed many similarities between the way both humans and dogs process sounds. Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot little puppies." – Gene Hill, author of A Hunter's Fireside Book and Hill Country As someone who loves dogs and lives with 3 of them, I have read a LOT of books about dogs so I can understand them better. A lot of the material in this book will be familiar to those who also read about dogs or watch specials about them on PBS (e.g. the 'who stays longer in a circle" experiment comparing wolves and dogs, or the breeding of foxes for tameness). However, the discussion of genetics and oxytocin receptors was new to me and fascinating. There was so much I liked about this book's exploration into what makes dogs special and how this relates to their bond with us (and also with other species). It was a thoroughly engaging look at how nature and nurture combine to form an intense emotional attachment in dogs towards people and that, it is this extremely strong social drive, rather than intelligence, that makes them special – so even those who are not the smartest are adept at reading and fitting in with their people. This isn’t to say dogs aren’t intelligent, although some are more so than others! Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole." – Roger Caras, author of A Dog Is Listening: The Way Some of Our Closest Friends View Us

Did you know that there are over 300 words for love in canine?" – Gabriel Zevin, author of Margarretown Finding out how variation of expressions of human orientated behaviour between individual dogs, within breeds, relates to different gene developments and whether they had the AA oxytocin receptor gene versus the GG or the AG oxytocin receptor gene but that breed could also impact on how the peptide oxytocin levels interrelated with different gene combinations and behaviour responses. It would be really interesting to follow more studies in this area. There are times when even the best manager is like the little boy with the big dog—waiting to see where the dog wants to go so he can take him there." – Lee Iacocca, former president and CEO of Chrysler The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs." – Charles De Gaulle, President of the French Republic In the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money can not buy … to wit—the wag of a dog's tail." – Josh Billings, humorist and lecturerResearchers on a quest to answer this age-old question conducted magnetic image resonance tests (MRI) on several trained dogs to look at their brain activity. When presented with a selection of different smells, the dogs were more excited by their human’s scent than by any other smell, including, notably, food. Research also tells us some dogs prefer praise over food, or want both equally.

A scientist sets out to prove what we all instinctively know, that dogs really do love humans. We're not just food dispensers. They have deep affectionate bonds with us. A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down." – Robert Benchley, humorist and actor Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate." – Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst Canine science has enjoyed a resurgence in the past two decades, much of it extolling dogs' smarts.Actually, my dog I think is the only person who consistently loves me all the time." – H. G. Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize winning American author and journalist Dr. Wynne has a dog named Xephos that he loves very much; he's also the founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University. Since he loves dogs, and loves researching dogs, he decided to write a book about Animal Behavior Science, with a dash of Evolutionary Biology, as it pertains to dogs, to answer the question: Why do dogs love us? One involved researchers using a rope to pull open the front door of a dog's home and placing a bowl of food at an equal distance to its owner, finding that the animals overwhelmingly went to their human first. Zazie: This question is from book club member Cathy Shamblin. She has a 13-week-old Kelpie who is learning to herd and has been following her dad Kelpie around the farm. She says, “Does ‘instinct’ inform a dog’s emotional ties to humans? Dogs have an instinctual bond to follow a leader. Do we humans get that instinct mixed up with love?” A man and his dog are silhouetted against the rising sun amid dense fog on a cold winter morning on the outskirts of Chandigarh on February 9, 2020

Jamie Richardson, a veterinarian and medical chief of staff at Small Door Veterinary, says that merely hearing your name will be enough to get some dogs excited. "Over time, dogs learn to recognize human names. If they hear a loved one's name mentioned who isn't present, they'll get excited at the thought that they might appear," said Richardson. 3. They follow you around And what we found was that there are three genes that show mutations on the journey from wolf to dog, and in humans if you have mutations in those genes, not only do you have Williams Syndrome, not only do these three genes contribute to Williams Syndrome, but they contribute specifically to those aspects of Williams Syndrome that have to do with forming strong warm friendly relationships. So we’ve been able to identify the genetic changes that took place in the journey from wolves to dogs thousands of years ago. Genetic changes which we know from studies in our own species looking at Williams Syndrome, and also some experimental work that was done on mice where scientists can actually mess around with the genes and seeing what changing a gene does directly to an individual animal. So we have several lines of evidence that dogs are exceptionally gregarious, exceptionally friendly, because of these genetic changes. And that may well be the crux of it. Obviously dogs are different from wolves in many ways, but this I think might be the critical mutation, the critical change, that makes dogs the amazing beings that they are. If you eliminate smoking and gambling, you will be amazed to find that almost all an Englishman's pleasures can be, and mostly are, shared by his dog." – George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright Clive Wynne, founder the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, makes the case in "Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You."

Positive Brainwaves

Animals have come to mean so much in our lives. We live in a fragmented and disconnected culture. Politics are ugly, religion is struggling, technology is stressful, and the economy is unfortunate. What's one thing that we have in our lives that we can depend on? A dog or a cat loving us unconditionally, every day, very faithfully." – Jon Katz, American journalist, author, and photographer

If you don't believe your dog actually feels love for you and is just faking affection to get, look at your spouse. Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that is how dogs spend their lives." – Sue Murphy, American comedian Clive: It’s one of the lines of research that really show us the affectionate bond between people and their dog. I think of it in my own mind as how the heartbeat becomes synchronized, how they’re just so attuned with each other. Their whole biological systems are just attuning with each other. Now that we’re talking about it I wonder why nobody’s actually done an experiment combining those things. I think of it as connected to the research out of Japan where they look at the hormone oxytocin. People call oxytocin the love hormone because it spikes when two individuals are together and looking into each other’s eyes, individuals who have a very strong emotional connection, like mothers and infants or newly-enamoured couples; not old married couples but newly-enamoured couples. When they look into each other’s eyes you see these spikes in the levels of oxytocin, on both sides – the dog and the person. So the heart rate and the heart beat synchronization and the oxytocin studies are very similar lines of research. They point us very much in the same direction. They show us how, at a quite deep biological level, people and their dogs show this biological connection to each other. The average dog is a nicer person than the average person." – Andy Rooney, American TV writer and contributor on 60 MinutesA dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.” While it’s probably not behavior you want to encourage, most of the time your dog isn’t collecting up your personal belongings to be naughty, but rather because the smell makes them feel closer to you. But although dogs have an innate predisposition for affection, it requires early life nurturing to take effect. No animal I know of can consistently be more of a friend and companion than a dog." – Stanley Leinwall You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”