Wynne guesses this happened 8,000 - 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, when humans began regularly hunting with dogs.

Researchers on a quest to answer this age-old question conducted magnetic image resonance tests (MRI) on several trained dogs to look at their brain activity. When presented with a selection of different smells, the dogs were more excited by their human’s scent than by any other smell, including, notably, food. Research also tells us some dogs prefer praise over food, or want both equally.

Think about when someone stares at you, how awkward and uncomfortable you can feel, it’s the same for dogs.

While they can’t quite smile in the same way that we humans can, many dogs often get pretty close. "[Pet] dogs can raise their inner eyebrows much more dramatically than wild dogs, and this sympathetic, adorable expression is thought to induce feelings of care and nurturing in their human owners," said Greenstein. Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it watching for us to come home each day." – John Grogan, author of Marley & MeHandoko Njotokusumo and Ace ride through traffic during their weekend joy ride on a motorcycle in Surabaya, Indonesia Clive Wynne, a psychologist and founder of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, is the author of a book called “Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You.” In an interview in The Washington Post, when asked whether his dog Xephos loves him, he said: The book concludes with practical suggestions of how to improve the emotional lives and health of dogs in homes, in shelters, and purebreds.

I loved reading about what makes dogs love humans, both genetic (Williams syndrome, I had no idea) and hormonal, and about how dogs did and didn't evolve from wolves. But the ending made me laugh out loud. You know, a dog can snap you out of any kind of bad mood that you're in faster than you can think of." – Jill Abramson, American author and journalist, and former executive editor of The New York Times Magnetic resonance imaging has drilled down on the neuroscience, showing that dogs' brains respond to praise as much or even more than food.Dogs exhibit other signs of love, too—like wagging tails or a paw held aloft. In fact, dogs express their emotions via body language in a variety of ways, ranging from super subtle to totally obvious. It's not always easy to tell how pets are feeling based on their behaviors, but there are some surefire ways to determine that they feel safe and loved—and want to reciprocate the feeling. Finding out how variation of expressions of human orientated behaviour between individual dogs, within breeds, relates to different gene developments and whether they had the AA oxytocin receptor gene versus the GG or the AG oxytocin receptor gene but that breed could also impact on how the peptide oxytocin levels interrelated with different gene combinations and behaviour responses. It would be really interesting to follow more studies in this area. Does my dog love me or just my food? If you’ve asked yourself this question, you’re one of the thousands of dog owners who have wondered the same thing. Are they the ultimate scam artists, or do they truly love us? Clive Wynne, a canine behaviorist and founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University in Tempe, has always loved dogs, but it took him many years to become convinced that the feeling is reciprocated. In Dog Is Love, readers accompany Wynne on his scientific journey from skeptic to believer. Not only do dogs love us, he argues, but it is their capacity and desire to connect with humans that makes dogs unique. It also means carving out time to meet their social needs instead of leaving them isolated for most of the day.