As a parent, you may have been totally ready for the kids to get out of the house after 3 months of summer break and head back to school. Buuut your family dog likely has some very different feelings about the kids going back to school for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week.
If you ever had a dog growing up, you probably remember getting home from school to your at home bestie jumping all over you, clearly excited that you finally came back from where ever you go when you leave them all day long.
In fact, there have been videos captured of dogs who totally freak out when their tiny human is getting ready to head to the school bus or walk out the door with a backpack on and it's so sad!
So, can it be proven that our dogs miss us when we are gone? Behaviorist and Emory University psychology and neuroeconomics professor, Gregory S. Berns, set out to figure out the answer to just that.
He tested dog's brain responses to the smells of familiar and unfamiliar people. familiar and unfamiliar dogs, and to their own scent. As you would expect, the dog's reward centers lit up way more when they smelled the scent of a person they knew.
In addition, dogs can tell the difference shorter and longer periods of separation from their favorite people.
If that isn't the cutest thing you've ever heard, then I don't know WHAT is.
All of this to say, show your dogs just a little extra love every year when the kids go back to school. They are likely to get a little stressed when their human leaves for school, but of course they will be incredibly excited every day when the kids come home.
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