Research suggests dogs can pick up clues about how we’re feeling from our faces, body language and even our smell. Experts explain what your pet may be noticing.
Dog owners often swear their pet knows exactly how they feel. Now scientists tracking dogs’ brain activity as they looked at human faces have found that owners may be right at least some of the time.
In a small 2026 University of Vienna study, researchers scanned dogs as they looked at photographs of unfamiliar people. In one experiment, dogs saw happy and neutral faces. In another, they saw happy, sad, scared and angry ones. The scans revealed that the dogs’ brains responded differently to some of the expressions.
“This research reminds us that dogs are not simply looking at our faces – they’re processing emotional information from them,” says dog trainer Nina Fotara, founder of Confident Canine.
“For a dog, our faces are one piece of a much larger picture,” she explains. Dogs also pick up information from our voice, posture, pace, breathing, muscle tension, gaze and scent.
Here’s what the experts say your dog can sense from five of our emotional states.
How your smile can encourage your dog to engage with you
In the study, smiling faces activated an area of the dog’s right temporal cortex that extended into the caudate nucleus, part of the brain’s reward system.
The researchers say this suggests that dogs may respond to a human smile as something positive that encourages them to engage.
Trainer Joe Nutkins has seen this first-hand. In one training class, a dog practising a “look at me” exercise kept looking everywhere except at its concentrating, serious-faced owner.
“I suggested the owner smile a little to soften their face and straightaway the dog was happy to do the exercise, keen to engage with their owner and much more focused,” says Nutkins.
Why your dog knows something isn’t quite right
The researchers could distinguish dogs’ responses to sad and fearful faces, although they found no clear evidence that dogs processed sad and angry faces differently.
Earlier research looked at how dogs responded when their owners felt sad. A 2024 Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology study tested dog-owner pairs in Germany. Some owners watched a sad film clip and then returned to teaching their dog a route around a cone.
The dogs spent more time in the same half of the room as their owners than they had during a neutral session. Yet they didn’t approach or touch them more. During training, they also looked at their owners less and were less likely to obey a familiar “sit”. The researchers suggested that the dogs may have noticed their owners were distracted and might be less likely to insist when they ignored a command.
“A dog who comes closer when we’re upset is not necessarily trying to comfort us,” says dog trainer Niki French. “They may be checking what’s happening or trying to reduce the tension.”
The signals that may tell your dog there’s danger nearby
Fear was the only negative expression that produced a brain-activity pattern researchers could distinguish from both anger and sadness.
“A frightened face may suggest that there’s something worrying in the environment,” says French.
Dogs read a frightened face alongside other bodily cues, she says. On a walk, your dog may notice if you suddenly stop, stare, hold your breath or tighten the lead. Together, these signals could warn them that something nearby may be unsafe.
How dogs react when tension rises
An angry expression may tell your dog that a situation has become tense. However, your dog doesn’t necessarily know what you’re angry about or who you’re angry with.
In the study, dogs’ responses to angry faces differed from their responses to fearful ones. Yet researchers couldn’t reliably distinguish their responses to anger and sadness.
French says context may supply the missing information. Direct eye contact, a harsh tone, tense movements or someone leaning towards a dog can suggest that the person is angry and directing their anger towards them.
Anger directed elsewhere can still be frightening for a dog. A dog hearing their owner shout on a phone call may know that the room has become intense and unpredictable. They won’t necessarily understand that the tension has nothing to do with them, says French.
If you discover a chewed cushion or upturned bin, you may see your dog lower their body, avert their gaze and flatten their ears when you approach them. They can probably tell that you’re angry or upset, but not necessarily why. “The so-called guilty look is much more likely to be a response to our behaviour than evidence that the dog understands they’ve done something we consider to be wrong,” says French.
Your dog may be responding to your anger or trying to appease you and defuse the conflict, she explains.
Can your dog smell stress?
The 2026 brain scans didn’t look at stress, but other research suggests your dog may be able to detect that you’re under pressure without looking at your face.
A 2024 University of Bristol study found that the smell of human stress could make dogs more cautious. Dogs learned that a bowl in one position contained food while one elsewhere was empty. Researchers then placed a bowl in new positions between the two. When exposed to the sweat and breath of stressed strangers, the dogs were less likely to approach the new position closest to the place where they had learned not to expect food.
However, the effect emerged only when the dogs encountered the stress odour in their third and final test session, so the researchers treated it cautiously.
Scent is only one signal for a dog, says Fotara. When we’re stressed, we may breathe and move differently, repeat instructions, become less patient or shorten our dog’s lead.
A 2024 Queen’s University Belfast study monitored the heart rates of dogs and their owners. Changes in an owner’s heart rate predicted subsequent changes in their dog’s. This may suggest that dogs pick up on their owners’ emotions, although an exercise designed to alter the owners’ stress had no effect on either heart rate.
Fotara believes dogs can sometimes mirror how we feel. That may lead to a joyful situation when we’re happy and relaxed, but not when we’re upset or angry.
“Dogs don’t need emotionally perfect humans,” says Fotara. “What we can do is develop self-awareness and learn gentle regulation skills.” If your dog notices that you’re anxious, angry or sad, she recommends softening your voice and body and returning to a familiar routine to help show them that everything is safe again.
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