Do dogs miss us when we’re gone

Because we miss our dogs so much when they are no longer with us, it’s easy to imagine that they feel the same.  Dogs are intuitive that’s for certain, but whether they grieve for us isn’t so sure.  Some dogs seem to know when someone is about to die, they become restless and anxious but that can be for many other reasons too, so don’t read too much into it if your dog is having an anxiety attack.  It might just be about whether you’ll be feeding him roast lamb  for his supper!

We like to think about the loyal dog waiting for his owner to return but our lifetime’s experience with dogs doesn’t show this to be real. We have a lifetime of studying the behaviour of our canine friends and believe that dogs live in the present, it’s either good or bad, happy or sad and mostly they accept this.

We’ve heard of dogs pining to death when their owner’s aren’t around any more but this is very rare.  Some breeds are more sensitive than others, a German Shepherd refused to eat when he was left with another member of the family.  This went on for weeks and his owner had to be summoned back or else he would have surely starved to death.

Dogs do have extra senses though and seem to distinguish between being left temporarily, when being boarded for example.  They don’t worry about this at all and are happy and content, knowing their people will come back for them.  They dos not sense any anguish in the situation.  If a dog is having a good time while being boarded, if he likes the food and has a comfy bed and lots of praise and fuss, he usually doesn’t want to go home.  ‘Hi Mum, good to see you, just off up the fields, chicken for dinner, catch you later!’

When an owner has passed away it’s a different matter.  There’s a lot of grief and a dog will pick up on this.   A scent of illness perhaps and dogs have super-sensitive scent glands and pick up even a trace of a trace of a person.

The unhappiness of family and friends is sensed and the dog will become anxious.  There’s usually a disruption to routine, little surprise that bereaved pets are sad when they come in to us.  They don’t stay unhappy for long though and as soon as they are having a nice time and are consoled and trust us, they are fine again.  We do not see prolonged grieving.

We recently took one of our residents (who’d come in when his owner passed away) back to see the remaining family.  We went back to his old home and the people he’d known well for many years were sitting round the kitchen table.  He was pleased to see them, not bothered at all about his former home but ….. he stared fixedly at the empty chair …… where his owner usually sat.

He got up to come back to the sanctuary without a backward glance.  He knew she wasn’t there and that was it.