How to take care of a clingy dog???

Just as the title stated, do dogs actually show signs for jealousy when the owner gives attention to another dog? It is likely that, along with “primary” emotions, at least some “secondary” social emotions have evolved in non-human species to regulate inter-individual social relations (Cubicciotti and Mason 1978; Panskepp 2010; Palagi et al. 2015; de Waal and Preston 2017; Maninger et al. 2017).  Studies have shown that human infants become troubled and vocalize when their mother directs her attention to another infant or sibling starting from 6 months of age. Such behavior include maintaining close proximity, and touch/push the social competitor; or aggressive reactions toward the competitor or mother. These responses are considered expressions of jealousy. Domestic dogs are known to have sophisticated socio-cognitive abilities, which in some cases are parallel to those of human infants (Prato-Previde et al. 2003; Lakatos et al. 2009; Tomasello and Kaminski 2009; Marshall et al. 2013).

The presence of jealousy in dogs was recently examined using a procedure in which either the owner alone or the owner and an unfamiliar person affectionately interact with a stuffed dog or other objects, while ignoring the experimental dog (Prato-Previde and Nicotra et al. 2018). The studies provided contrasting results on whether dogs considered a fake dog as a potential rival and how their reaction and behavior could be explained in terms of jealousy. Harris and Prouvost reported that dogs showed a pattern of behavior that might be a subject of jealousy. The dog showed aggressive behavior by pushing, touching, the object or the owner when their owner manipulated the stuffed dog. This concluded that the dog showed no jealous behavior when the owner gave his/her attention to a random object. On the other hand, a study down by Prato-Previde et al. found no clear evidence that dogs considered the fake dog as a social rival and reported no different response in dogs when the owner showed attention to random objects (Prato-Previde et al.). The experiment was conducted on 25 dyad dogs living in the same household with their owner. In 4 dyads, the owner was not able to pet one or both dogs, which failed to respect the the testing procedure. These 4 dyads were then excluded from the experiment leading to only 21 dyads participating. The testing took place in a room which was equipped with one chair for the owner, a small plastic table, a water bowl, a computer, and an HD video camera to record the test. The owners followed a series of actions that would conduct the experiment. Firstly, in the duration of one minute, both dogs would be ignored, having the owner walking around the room to pay attention to posters on the wall. Next, the owners would be instructed to sit on a chair, reading magazines and not looking nor interacting with the dogs, regardless of their behaviour. Third, the owners would remain seated and call out to one of the two dogs and give attention to that particular dog while ignoring the other. Following, the owner will call out and greet both dogs, then proceed to ignore them while walking around the room. The next step is for the owners to repeat the step of sitting down and ignoring the dogs. Finally, the dog owner will call out to the dog that they did not call for in a previous step and giving that dog attention and completely ignoring the other dog.

The results of this experiment prove non exclusive as experimental evidence are limited and have very contrasting results. Although the belief that dogs are capable of jealousy is well rooted among people and dog owners (Morris et al. 2008, 2012; Martens et al. 2016), experimental evidence is limited and provides contrasting results (Harris and Prouvost 2014; Abdai et al. 2018; Prato-Previde et al. 2018). The experiment led to non conclusive results as some dogs showed emotions as how an infant would and other were completely unattentive. This experiment implies that a dog’s upbringings may be the reason why some are react to the lack of attention from their owners and some do not. The sample dogs that were well rooted dyads were used to monitor the interactions between owners and companion dogs. Cohabiting dog, another bunch from the sample dogs, maintained equilibrium and have probably established social dynamics mainly based on prosociality rather than conflicts (Cools et al. 2008; Dale et al. 2016) and this could explain why we found almost no evidence of aggressive behavior.

Prato-Previde, E., Nicotra, V., Fusar Poli, S. et al. Anim Cogn (2018) 21: 703. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-018-1204-0