CBS3 Pet Project: How Pets Develop Loving Bond With Humans
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- If you've got a dog or a cat, you know that love is in the air all the time. Sure, they can be irritating but can your significant other be irritating? Of course. They all can.
Animal advocate Carol Erickson joined Eyewitness News with some tips on showing your pet some love this Valentine's Day.
She says there is a book that has some really great takeaways because dogs love us all year long.
The book is titled "Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You".
The author is a canine behaviorist, a psychologist and it turns out that dogs love more easily than people do.
So they will fall in love a lot and if you've ever gotten a dog or been around a dog, you know how quickly they can bond to you.
One thing that came out of the book is that dogs will form affectionate relationships with other species, whatever they are, whoever they are when they meet them early in life. They've even shown this to be true when dogs meet penguins.
The MRIs of dogs show objects related to their owners the brain lights up in the reward centers.
The presence of a beloved human is very rewarding to a dog. And the hormonal levels go up in both dogs and owners when they look in one another's eyes.
It's very important to recognize the connection bond that you have with your dog and they have with you.
That is as real as a connection that any individual might feel towards you.
The other thing that's very interesting is that dogs do respond to human cries and they do try to comfort them.
It's also interesting that when a dog may have to move on to other families, they can do that a lot more easily than people could.
Watch the video to hear more from this week's segment.
