A New Study Says Your Dog Doesn’t Want To Be Hugged

dog hug
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Sometimes after a long day at work, all you want to do is get home and squeeze your dogs until you fall asleep. Unfortunately, according to a new study, your dog is super uncomfortable with your hugs. Even this dog being hugged BY ANOTHER DOG appears to be less than happy with a puppy-hug from his best friend.

The study was published in Psychology Today and it specifically examined the fact that dogs are cursorial animals. As a species, dogs are designed to run, and when they’re stressed or feel threatened, a dog’s first line of defense is to take off. Unlike humans for whom hugs produce hormones associated with love and bonding, hugging a dog deprives it of a very important instinct.

Look at this terrified pup:

scared dog
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In order to draw these conclusions, researchers studied easily observable signs of stress and anxiety in dogs. Yes, these are signs of distress, not your dog’s creative way of reciprocating exhaustion and relief after a day without your presence. For example, when you hug a dog, it may turn its head away and close its eyes. That means, ‘I don’t like this,’ not ‘more, please!’ Dogs will also show “half-moon eye” where you can see white around the corners or rim of the eye and may also lower their ears (which makes them look cute like Dobby the house elf), but is actually sad. Even licking can be a sign of stress!

So the next time you go to squeeze your pup, don’t. But if you absolutely must, make sure it’s in front of a mirror and see how much he likes it. According to this study, there’s an 82% chance he’ll be showing at least one sign of stress.

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