Lessons from Langston: Animal Instinct

In case you are just tuning in, a few months ago, I interviewed dog behaviorist Todd Langston. His interview provided so many pearls of wisdom about canine behavior that I decided to turn his advice into multiple posts called Lessons from Langston. To catch up, click here.

In this lesson, we talk about animal instinct. I cringe every time I hear Todd’s answer about whether dogs feel human emotions or not. I’m one of those suckers that wants to believe they do, yet I’m fully aware they don’t.

Have a great holiday weekend. I should be home with my pack  and blogging again by early next week. I have some news about Lucy, but I’m going to make you wait for it…it’s big.

Do you think dogs feel emotions like we do?

“Dogs are objective animals. They are instinctive creatures that are operating more on instinctive reactions. It’s not that they aren’t thoughtful and emotional, but when all these people insist that dog’s feel love and shit, they want something really bad to exist that doesn’t really exist in the way that they want it to. Dogs don’t love the way humans do.

I give this example. If you want to understand love to an animal world, here it is: I think lions are infinitely smarter than dogs. I think big cats are awesome, and I think a lion would outwit a dog any day of the week. But in the wild, a male lion will come in and kill and eat a mother’s cubs. And then a few weeks later [she’ll] mate with that lion and that becomes her new baby daddy. Ok, so that’s normal instinctive behavior for a lot of wild animals. And humans want to insist that animals feel like us. And I understand it. I get it. But do they?”