Have you ever experienced the following situation: your Shih Tzu with one of your shoes, all chewed up and bitten, lying beside them? You feel upset, and your dog then makes that guilty-looking face: ears down, avoiding eye contact, and turning their head, as if they know they did something they shouldn’t have.But do Shih Tzus really feel guilt?
According to Alexandra Horowitz, a researcher, professor at Columbia University, and author of several books on canine cognition, dogs don’t feel guilt. The expression we interpret as guilt has other explanations:
1. Signs of calm or appeasement: These are signals that Shih Tzus use to communicate and can indicate discomfort, an attempt to avoid conflict, and to calm themselves.
Some of these signals, like the ones mentioned earlier (lowering their ears, avoiding eye contact, and turning their head), are signs that dogs typically exhibit in these situations to show they are afraid and want to avoid conflict.They are asking us to calm down, but they don’t have the concept of right and wrong, as these are human concepts, and their perception of certain objects is entirely different from ours.
A shoe, which serves as footwear for us, might be very interesting for your dog to chew on because it carries your scent.Most problems arise because we don’t understand and perceive the world in the same way our dogs do.
2. The Shih Tzu reacts in response to our behaviors: In her book “Inside of a Dog” (2012), Horowitz describes an experiment she conducted with fourteen dogs, where their owners told them not to eat a treat and then left the room.
She concluded that the behavior that appears to be guilt was more related to the owner’s reaction than the act itself of obeying or not. In some instances, the researchers themselves removed the treats from the room, told the owners that the dogs had disobeyed, and the owners scolded the dogs. It was in these situations that the dogs exhibited more of this “guilty” behavior.
This happens because dogs learn by association, and they do it very quickly. If they bark or whine and receive attention, they learn that doing so attracts attention. If the Shih Tzu creates a mess, and the owner comes home hours later and scolds them, the dog learns to associate the owner’s arrival, change in their voice, and facial expression with reprimand, meaning they associate the owner’s reactions with scolding, not with the mess itself.What’s the importance of all this?
Knowing that dogs don’t feel guilt but react based on our behavior, we can understand that if a dog already exhibits this behavior of apparent guilt (which actually indicates fear and conflict avoidance), the best thing to do is not scold them, as it will only make them more insecure.The ideal approach is to try to understand how your Shih Tzu thinks and sees things and provide them with proper ways to expend their energy.
A Shih Tzu with nothing to do at home will seek activities, and if they don’t have the right toys, they might find something to entertain themselves, even if it’s something you consider “wrong.”