The One Odd Scent That Dogs Can Smell On Their Owners — ‘It Bums Them Out’
Incredibly sensitive and intuitive, your dogs are always aware of how you’re feeling.
Standret | Shutterstock.com If you’re a pet owner, you know that no matter what you’re doing, how busy you are, or how chaotic your life is, your dog is always at your side and in tune with your emotions.
Unsurprisingly, a new study has found that pups recognize not only basic reactive emotions like happiness and sadness but also a variety of other complex feelings, including one that they can sniff out on their owners.
The one ‘odd scent’ your dog can smell on you that affects their emotional state — ‘It bums them out.’
Not only are our furry besties always looking out for us, but they’re also impacted by our overall health, and not just because they rely on us for food and fun.
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However, it isn’t just visual and verbal cues that allow dogs to understand how we’re feeling.
They can also read our emotions through smell. Similarly to service dogs who sniff out gluten for their celiac owners, dogs can smell their owners' sweat and breath to decipher stress.
Dogs can smell their owners' and strangers ‘stress levels, which can inadvertently affect their mood, activity, and health.
A Scientific Reports study revealed that dogs can smell their owner’s stress levels through an "odd scent" that changes based on what activity that person is doing.
This stress scent often affects dogs’ activity, performance, and routine, and just like with their human companions, can ultimately impact their health and well-being.
After collecting breath and sweat samples from people engaged in both high-stress and low-stress activities, the study’s researchers assigned food bowls to each sample and measured the ways in which dogs approached or avoided them.
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Unsurprisingly, dogs purposefully avoided food bowls with the “stress samples” leading researchers to conclude that the dogs could smell stress hormones and that this negatively affected their emotional baseline.
For this same reason, many animal experts suggest dogs sense general upset in their owners, and warn against common symptoms of distress like a loss of appetite or stomach irritation.
Dogs are always evaluating the best ways to interact with you based on how you’re feeling.
If they sense that you’re upset, they might become more low-energy, avoid eye contact, cuddle up, or become uninterested in toys and food.
One study even found that dogs will try to make you laugh — repeating behavior, actions, or sounds that they remember made you smile or boosted your own emotional state.
Not only are they hilarious and cute, but they’re also sensitive. Your best furry friend is always looking out for your best interest and is concerned when your baseline is skewed.
Incredibly sensitive and intuitive, dogs truly are man’s best friend — or, at the very least, man’s built-in emotional support friend.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories