Man's Best Friend
There are over one hundred million pets in the United States today. That's a lot of kibble. Typing "dog" into a search engine yields almost four million pages. Over half of all American families have at least one pet. The vast majority of these pets are dogs and cats, the only truly domesticated animals that we've brought into our homes. What is there in our hundred-millennia-long human-dog relationship that has created such an affectionate bond between humans and their dogs? Many people consider their dogs as family members and studies show that having a family dog enhances the quality of a person's life. Dog owners have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, make fewer visits to the doctor and are less susceptible to depression. There is evidence that animal companionship reduces loneliness and gives a person a sense of well-being. Children who have dogs have greater self-esteem and score higher on tests of popularity, social skills and compassion for others.

What Humans Think
Dogs seem to experience sadness and joy. They can also appear to demonstrate powers beyond our understanding. Since dogs can't talk, or rather, we can't understand if a particular bark means, "Timmy's trapped in the mine shaft" or "Is it time to play," we rely upon scientists and animal behaviorists to interpret their actions for us. There's a considerable difference of opinion among these animal experts.

Traditionally there have been two schools of thought. The Pavlovian approach saw dogs as largely mechanistic beings subject to conditioning. Any apparent emotional expression was considered mere projection from their human counterparts. The other theory viewed dogs from an anthropomorphic perspective and saw them as human-like - subject to human feelings and emotions. There's certainly a lot of anthropomorphism going on in the world of dog owners. (Can a dog understand the concept of a birthday party? Do dogs actually play poker when we're not looking?) In recent years there has developed a third school, one that aims to study dog's minds from the perspective of their own "dogginess" or wolf-nature. Within this school there are great differences as well. At one end of the spectrum is Stephen Budiansky's ideas in The Truth About Dogs, where he posits that dogs are basically charming parasites who only pretend to like us in order to gain food and shelter. At the other end sits scientist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. His book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals sets out to demonstrate the idea that "morphic fields" exist between humans and dogs who bond together, and that these fields act "as a channel for telepathic communication." It's certainly true that most dog owners have experienced a moment when their dog seems to know their very thoughts. Perhaps we really are in touch with each other in ways that science has yet to explain.