Are My Dogs Happy?
"What? Me worry?"
Wallace and Winston just being present.
Wallace and Winston just being present.
I was watching my dogs lay on their beds. Both of them were relaxing and looking outside at the birds. I wondered what they were thinking. I don't believe they have cognitive or existential thoughts, but I do believe that my dogs can think. Their thoughts run Primal, I'm sure. "I'm hungry," "When can I get food?" "My butt itches," "My ear itches," "I'll scratch them." Do the thoughts go any farther than that? "I love my master," "I'm so comfortable right now," "I want to play." Do they have memories of catching lizards or chasing a bird or playing with each other? Do they feel a burden or excitement when they anticipate what's going to happen in the future? Clearly, I think not, but it sort of points me in a particular direction.
Are my dogs happy? Depending on where you look, happiness is a subjective experience that is characterized by positive emotions, contentment, and overall life satisfaction. It can be described as a state of well-being and a sense of fulfillment and purpose in life. If happiness is subjective and is characterized by some form of contentment, then I can argue that my dogs are at least marginally happy. Of course, my dogs don't recognize a state of well-being of fulfillment and purpose of life. That's a sentient, cognitive experience, and not one for dogs, I think.
So, I suppose I can characterize my dogs as being content and satisfied, and that means that they could be characterized as happy. On the other hand, perhaps not. Then, the question is whether my dogs can be happy or unhappy? If my dogs are in some sort of pain or when my wife and I are out shopping and the dogs are home alone, they are what I would characterize as not very content, and not very happy. If dogs can be unhappy, can they be happy? For the sake of argument, let's assume they can touch the boundaries of each without actually understanding what happiness means.
At this point, I had to call a good friend of mine, Jeff, who has an awesome relationship with his dog. He and she have long conversations, and he's very much tuned into her behavior and feelings. He even claims that she has PowerPoint presentations to discuss the various levels of contentment and excitement and what brings them out the most. He's certainly not trained in Canine Behavioral Psychology, but I do trust his ability to identify with his doggy.
I asked him whether he believed his dog felt happiness. He berated me on such a deep conversation so early in the morning. He made an interesting observation that, in retrospect, was quite obvious. When a dog wags its tail and their ears are up, that is a physical representation of their mental state of happiness, excitement, and contentment. After giving Jeff a headache with my early morning critical thinking conversation, he clearly agreed that dogs can be both happy and unhappy.
But what brings on this level of happiness and contentment? I believe it's because they don't have the ability to live anywhere except the presence. They don't get distracted by anxious thoughts about the future, and they don't dwell on the past. They can't time travel. They're comfortably stuck in the here and the now.
The next time you have an opportunity, watch your house pets. Ask yourself the question why they show the level of content that they do. (If your house pet is a cat, you might want to substitute the word content with contempt. I don't like cats very much.) Pay attention to how fulfilled they look most of the time. Look at how much they lack the desire of things they once had or still do not. Somewhere in the life of our dogs is a very large part of The Fun Factor.