I'm starting to think because I'm literally crashing out right now that people just genuinely hate dogs. Like people who have dogs, people who say they love dogs, they just actually hate dogs. Every single day I log in on this app and there is a video with like over 2 million likes and the entire comment section is of people thinking it's so funny that a dog is stressed. This video I just saw is of this person like pretend yelling at their dog but their dog is so scared that they are as pressed against the wall as they possibly could be and are exhibiting every single stress signal that a dog can possibly display. And anytime the human or the camera gets closer to them then they like flinch and move away even further. And everybody in the comments thinks that it's funny. Like when a dog is in a shelter and looks scared, people are so easily able to understand how sad it is that the dog is scared. But when a dog is in a home that's supposed to care for them and love them and the dog looks just as scared and stressed as a dog in a shelter kennel because they're being yelled at, people think it's funny. Posting a video of your dog looking guilty is kind of a self report because dogs don't feel guilt but they do feel fear. So if you see a dog on the internet that's looking so incredibly guilty that they're squinting their eyes and like cowering, it's not because they feel bad about what they did, it's because that person has done something to that dog before that scared them so badly that they're now terrified of what their owner is going to do to them. There really is a burden of knowledge when it comes to understanding dog behavior and the ways dogs brains work because I literally kept like I try not to scroll this app and consume content because it's so exhausting how funny people think it is to see a dog that is scared out of its mind. And honestly to me, it's even worse when the human who's supposed to love them more than anything else in this world and the only safe person is the one that's causing them to be so scared. We every single day as humans take advantage of how easily dogs forgive us. We know that no matter how we treat them, they're going to choose to love us because they can't go anywhere else. And sometimes I wish that like dogs didn't forgive us as much as they did so we couldn't get away with treating them horribly. And then just thinking it's funny because they love us the next second anyway. Like when a dog is in a shelter and looks scared, people are so easily able to understand how sad it is that the dog is scared. But when a dog is in a home that's supposed to care for them and love them and the dog looks just as scared and stressed as a dog in a shelter kennel because they're being yelled at, people think it's funny. Posting a video of your dog looking guilty is kind of a self report because dogs don't feel guilt but they do feel fear. So if you see a dog on the internet that's looking so incredibly guilty that they're squinting their eyes and like cowering, it's not because they feel bad about what they did, it's because that person has done something to that dog before that scared them so badly that they're now terrified of what their owner is going to do to them. There really is a burden of knowledge when it comes to understanding dog behavior and the ways dogs brains work because I literally kept like I try not to scroll this app and consume content because it's so exhausting how funny people think it is to see a dog that is scared out of its mind. And honestly to me, it's even worse when the human who's supposed to love them more than anything else in this world and the only safe person is the one that's causing them to be so scared. We every single day as humans take advantage of how easily dogs forgive us. We know that no matter how we treat them, they're going to choose to love us because they can't go anywhere else. And sometimes I wish that like dogs didn't forgive us as much as they did so we couldn't get away with treating them horribly. And then just thinking it's funny because they love us the next second anyway.
