A recent study found that dog’s have an innate sense of fairness. The very concept sounds a bit funny, well, funny that is unless you’ve ever owned more than one dog.
To paraphrase, the study took a pair of dogs and a bowl of dog treats. The dogs were each asked to “present a paw” ; commonly referred to as “shaking” in America – and their actions were rewarded with a dog treat. The test was repeated in sets of 30, and the test would mix things up. In one set, both dogs would get a treat. In another, neither dog would. And in a third, only one dog would be rewarded. What the scientists were measuring was how willing the dog was to complete the task in return for the coming treat – be it a piece of sausage, a bit of brown bread, or my dog’s favorite, odor free bully sticks.
What scientists observed was that a dog was most likely to complete a task when he knew a treat was coming, completing the task on nearly every time. When no treats were given at all, the dogs still complied about twenty out of thirty times. However, when a dog treat was only given to one dog, the other average about 12 out of 30 paw shakes and was visibly agitated.
The result is kind of shocking. Most dog owners can tell you that their dogs exhibit emotions, at least the big ones like happiness when you get home, or fear during a lightning storm. The fact that a dog would feel slighted, not earning equal treatment for equal work, well, let’s just hope the dogs don’t form a union.
This article has been provided by Arney Edinburgh.