Good dog owners don’t say goodbye… right?

It is better for your dog if you don’t pay him much attention when heading out the door, or when returning home. Right? I’ve considered this a given, a truth, about being a good dog owner. Oh how I’ve judged those owners who go in for full-on snuggling before they walk out their door. Don’t they know that can lead to anxious behaviors, a fixation on your coming and going, and separation anxiety?! Oh that poor dog, being so fully loved. His future is ruined.

So I was taken aback when I heard a trusted dog expert mention off-handedly, “Oh, and it is okay to greet your dog when you get home.” I was shocked, then intrigued. Why did she say that? Was that just her opinion, or did she know something I didn’t? Has my thinking about the best way to come and go been too narrow? I started to dig.

Light brown dog watching out window. Photo by Eric Masur on Unsplash

Where did the advice come from?

As I previously understood, the rationale for not engaging your dog on your way in and out of the house was to avoid inadvertently reinforcing anxious behaviors and to help your dog associate arrivals and departures with relaxation. But I started thinking the logic might not totally hold up, especially for dogs that weren’t feeling anxious to begin with.

The advice may also be spill-over from established and effective strategies to manage or help dogs who have diagnosable separation anxiety. About 15% of dogs have clinical separation anxiety, characterized by extreme distress when left alone. If you think your dog has separation anxiety, you should talk to your vet, and potentially a veterinary behaviorist, about how to help your dog. There are some resources at the end of this post. Skip ahead to that info.

For dogs without separation anxiety, petting dogs goodbye might actually keep them calmer while you’re away.

I searched and found two studies that could shed a bit more light on the effects of enthusiastic goodbyes. The first was conducted by a group of researchers from the University of Pisa in 2018. They questioned the common advice. They reasoned that because petting and close contact can be calming for our dogs (and us), perhaps petting your dog goodbye could have a preventative effect, keeping your dog calmer while you’re away.

To test this out, the researchers asked owners of ten dogs to leave their dogs on two different days. On one day, the owner provided a minute of gentle petting before their departure. On the other day, the owner left without the gentle petting. In both cases, the dog waited for three minutes on a long leash until the owner returned. The researchers were curious about the dogs’ welfare, essentially how the dog felt, in each scenario. They tried to discern how the dogs felt by analyzing video-recorded behavior during the owners’ absence and by measuring the dogs’ heart rates.

The results supported the idea that petting may indeed have a preventative effect. It seemed the gentle petting induced some calmness that lasted after the owner left the dog. Dogs who were gently pet showed more calm behaviors during the owners’ absence, such as laying down and calmly exploring. The dogs’ heart rates were also a bit slower after separations that followed gentle petting.

This one study of ten dogs left alone for only three minutes is just a start, of course. But it does point in the opposite direction of what we would have expected from the age-old advice to ignore your dog. One key question this study did not address is whether, over time, a dog would start to show more anxious behaviors over time if the owner repeatedly gives them a bunch of attention on their way out the door. This is what we’d predict if enthusiastic goodbyes were inadvertently reinforcing anxious behaviors.

Woman crouched down kissing dog in grass. Photo by Anna Dudkova on Unsplash.

How might your dog’s behavior change over time?

I was happy to find a second, more recent experiment conducted by two researchers from Texas Tech University. In their words, “The aim of the present study was to investigate whether directly engaging with a dog (petting, playing, et cetera) before a departure is associated with the development of an increased frequency of separation-related behaviors in newly adopted adult dogs.” Perfect!

The authors questioned whether dogs who were repeatedly exposed to energetic, playful departures would show an increase in anxious behaviors when they were left alone compared to dogs who were largely ignored during departures. In this case, the ignoring person silently read a book for the same amount of time (10 minutes). They looked at whether behaviors such as moving about the room, spending time near the door, barking, or whining increased over 10 days. They also had the dogs wear vests to measure their heart rate.

The dogs they studied were newly in the care of the research group, so they suggest their findings are most relevant to newly adopted dogs.

Again, the results call into question the idea that goodbyes will increase anxiety in our dogs. Dogs who had playful goodbyes showed a decrease in anxious behaviors and a decrease in heart rate over the ten absences that followed. Dogs did not show the increase in anxious behaviors that would be predicted by the long-standing advice to ignore your dog.

And one final piece of information. The researchers followed up this study with a questionnaire to over 2,000 dog owners, and again found evidence that suggested dogs were not harmed by enthusiastic goodbyes. The intensity of behaviors people showed upon leaving their dogs was not related to diagnoses of separation anxiety.

The Texas Tech research also had limitations. Like the previous study, a small number of dogs were studied in person. Neither of the experiments considered dogs in their home environment which could influence how dogs feel and behave.

Tan and white bulldog watching through the door. Photo by Rebecca Campbell on Unsplash.

So, should you pet your dog goodbye?

I would say the jury is still out. Certainly, the recent studies will lead me to continue to question the advice to ignore my dog on the way out the door. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more information, and watching my own dog’s behavior.

The motivation behind this post is not to encourage you to switch to enthusiastic departures, but rather to share my attempt to unpack and question something I’ve considered true for a long time. The dog world is full of advice… unpacking the origin of that advice and updating our own behavior based on current evidence can ultimately help us to create environments in which our animals thrive alongside us.

Please share this blog with others who want to know more about the science behind helping animals thrive, and subscribe to receive an email when a new blog is posted (no spam). Thanks!

Learn More

Mariti, C., Carlone, B., Protti, M., Diverio, S., & Gazzano, A. (2018). Effects of petting before a brief separation from the owner on dog behavior and physiology: A pilot study. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 27, 41-46. Link to article.

Teixeira, A. R., & Hall, N. J. (2021). Effect of greeting and departure interactions on the development of increased separation-related behaviors in newly adopted adult dogs. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 41, 22-32. Link to article.

Information about separation anxiety from the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists can be found here.

In formation about separation anxiety from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals can be found here.

A directory of certified veterinary behaviorists can be found here.

Petting dogs goodbye: Do or don’t?