Do Dogs Really Feel Guilt or Shame? (Op-Ed)

Marc Bekoff, emeritus professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is one of the world's pioneering cognitive ethologists, a Guggenheim Fellow, and co-founder with Jane Goodall of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Bekoff's latest book is Why Dogs Hump and Bees Get Depressed (New World Library, 2013). Recently, a reader sent me an essay by Laura Moss of Mother Nature Network called "Do Dogs Really Feel Guilt?" Moss summarizes the excellent studies conducted by a renowned dog researcher, Barnard College's Alexandra Horowitz. Horowitz discovered that people are not very good at reading doggie guilt or shame — and that we often see those emotions when they're not there, when the dogs aren't feeling them or because they didn't do anything that would elicit these sorts of responses. Horowitz goes deeper into these concepts in her new edited book called Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior.