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It has been a rotten day. You sink onto the sofa, the tears finally come, and a moment later there is a warm weight against your leg and a nose pushing under your hand. It is the kind of moment that leaves you sure your dog knew.
Scientists have tested that belief with photographs, recordings, pretend crying and, more recently, real sadness. The answer is more modest than the folklore, and more interesting: dogs pick up a lot about how we feel, but what they make of it is still argued over. Here is what the studies show, and what that means on hard days.
What your dog can read in your face
Start with the face, where most of us show how we feel. In a 2015 study in Vienna, dogs were shown pairs of human faces, one happy and one angry, and learned to pick the happy one, or for some dogs the angry one1. One group saw only the top half of each face and the other group only the bottom half1.
The dogs then passed tests with faces they had never seen, and with the half of each face they had not trained on1. Those pictures shared only the expression with the training set, so the researchers concluded that the dogs were drawing on memories of real human faces1.
Dogs rewarded for picking angry faces learned more slowly than those rewarded for picking happy ones. That, the researchers note, is what you would expect if an angry face is something a dog would sooner avoid1.
Voices and faces together
Faces are only part of the message. In a 2016 study by researchers at the Universities of Lincoln and São Paulo, 17 family dogs faced two screens showing the same person or dog with two expressions, happy or playful on one side and angry or aggressive on the other2. Meanwhile a single voice or bark played, positive or negative in tone2.
Every face and voice belonged to a stranger, and the people spoke Brazilian Portuguese, so the dogs could not lean on familiar voices or words2. Even so, the dogs showed a clear preference for the face that matched the sound's emotion in 67% of trials, and favoured neither face when the sound was neutral noise2.
The match was stronger for dog faces than for human ones, and the dogs had no training for the task2. The authors believe it is the first evidence of an animal other than humans combining emotional signals from another species2. It was a small study, though, and it left sadness out.
What dogs do when someone cries
In a small 2012 study, researchers visited 18 pet dogs in their own homes in the north-west United States3. The owner and a stranger chatted, then took turns to pretend to cry for 20 seconds and to hum Mary Had a Little Lamb3. The humming checked whether the dogs were merely curious about odd noises3.
When someone pretended to cry
Of the 15 that approached, 13 did so in a way the observers judged submissive, which the researchers describe as mildly worried: head and body slightly lowered, ears back, tail low3. The observers did not know the aims or which condition they were watching3.
The telling part came when the stranger cried: dogs went to her, sniffing, nuzzling and licking, instead of turning to their owner3. A dog that was only upset itself would be expected to seek out its usual source of comfort, so this looked like more than the dog's own distress3.
Catching a feeling, a learned habit or empathy?
So do dogs feel for us? Researchers separate three things that look alike from the sofa. Emotional contagion is catching someone's emotional state, so their distress becomes yours. A learned response is habit. Empathy, in the stricter sense, means sharing a feeling while keeping track of whose it is, which is why comforting and helping count as signs of it3.
There is decent evidence that dogs catch our distress. In a 2014 New Zealand study, 75 dogs each heard one of three sounds: a baby crying, a baby babbling or computer-generated white noise. The hormone cortisol, which rises in people who hear a baby cry, rose only in the dogs that heard crying, and they reacted with a mix of submissiveness and alertness5.
Helping is a harder test. In a 2020 study from Arizona State University, the owners of 60 dogs sat inside a large box, once calling "help" in a distressed voice and once reading aloud calmly6. About a third of the dogs let their owner out6. Whether a dog did mostly came down to whether it could open the door at all: of the dogs that had opened it for a treat in a separate test, 84% also freed their owner, and most of the dogs that opened it did so whatever their owner sounded like6.
Even so, once ability was allowed for, distress made a rescue more likely, and dogs showed more signs of stress when their owner called for help6. The authors read that as the owner's distress spreading to the dog, and as support for an empathic motive6.
The crying study's authors were more cautious: their dogs looked concerned, but the simplest explanation, they wrote, was emotional contagion plus a history of being rewarded with affection for going to people in distress3.
| Explanation | What it means | What the research suggests |
|---|---|---|
| Catching a feeling | Your distress becomes your dog's | Supported: crying raised dogs' cortisol5; distressed owners raised dogs' stress signs6 |
| A learned habit | Going to an upset person has paid off before | The crying study's preferred reading, with contagion3 |
| Empathy | Feeling for you, knowing it is your feeling | Disputed: one rescue study saw support for it6; a 2024 study found no sign of it4 |
When the sadness is real
Most of this research relied on acted emotions or recordings4. In 2024, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, tried something closer to real life. Owners of 77 dogs read neutral instructions and later watched a short film clip, with their dog free to roam the room, and after each spent three minutes teaching it a trick: walking round a cone4.
The sad group saw a scene from Hachi: A Dog's Tale, the happy group one from Marley & Me, and the rest a documentary4. Owners were not told the real purpose, and though the sad group rated their mood lower afterwards, the researchers saw no obvious change in how they behaved4.
The dogs seem to have noticed anyway. During the sad clip they spent more time in their owner's half of the room than while their owner read the instructions, but they did not approach or touch them any more often4. In the training that followed, dogs of sad owners looked at them less and obeyed "sit" less often than after the neutral instructions, and jumped up less than dogs whose owners had watched the documentary4.
There is something wrong with my owner, I better stay at a certain distance, but also not too far away4
The authors concluded that sympathy or empathy looks unlikely, since the dogs made no move to comfort their owners, though they note the dogs had no obvious way to help4. They suggest dogs have seen their owners unhappy many times and may have learned it is better to keep away4. Happy owners, meanwhile, had dogs that did better at the trick4.
Looking after your dog on hard days
None of this means your dog is oblivious on your worst days. It very likely notices4, may catch some of the feeling5, 6, and answers in its own way: a nudge, a watchful eye from across the room, or a sudden deafness to "sit".
On a hard day
Do
- Let your dog choose how close to come; a dog lying a little way off may still be keeping an eye on you4
- Look out for signs of unease: a low body, tail tucked, ears back, yawning, lip licking or turning away7
- Give an uneasy dog room; the RSPCA says these signs mean a dog does not want you to go near7
- Keep up the walks if you can; the NHS lists regular exercise among things that may lift a low mood8
When to get help
If your dog's behaviour changes, with new clinginess, worry or withdrawal, take it seriously. The RSPCA notes that changes can be a sign something is wrong, and advises speaking to your vet first, who may refer you to a clinical animal behaviourist7.
Look after yourself too. If your own low mood lasts more than two weeks, or you are struggling to cope, the NHS advises seeing a GP, and Samaritans are on 116 123 if you need someone to talk to8.
Your dog may never know why you are sad, and may not feel sorry for you the way a friend would. It does seem to notice, though, and on the worst days a dog that has noticed and stayed in the room is good company.
Sources and further reading8 sources
The small numbers in the article link to the source behind each fact. Sources open on their own websites.
- Dogs can discriminate emotional expressions of human faces
- Dogs recognize dog and human emotions
- Empathic-like responding by domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to distress in humans: an exploratory study
- Dogs distinguish authentic human emotions without being empathic
- Emotional contagion: dogs and humans show a similar physiological response to human infant crying
- Pet dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) release their trapped and distressed owners: Individual variation and evidence of emotional contagion
- Understanding a dog's body language
- Low mood, sadness and depression