I’m not even aware of a scientific definition of nostalgia, or any way to verify detect its presence. Which means that afaik, there’s no way to know what they do and don’t experience in that regard.
However, I’ve been around a lot of dogs over the years. One of the things that’s pretty consistent is that, while their memory is better than they get credit for, they don’t seem to have emotional responses to memory when it isn’t trauma related.
In other words, they don’t exhibit behaviors to indicate that they’re thinking about the past when engaging with something in the present. They seem to live in the present until and unless something happens that sets off a fear response related to past events.
That being said, I have also had a dog react strongly when the name of another animal was used in their presence, when that other animal was no longer in their life. The dog in specific that I saw this in would spend time after hearing the name looking for the missing animal, and eventually settle down extra close to people and exhibit behaviors that mimic sadness behaviors when humans do them. But it never insured lasted for long, and anything positive at all would break them out of it immediately.
That isn’t the same as nostalgia. I’m using it as an example of why I don’t think they experience nostalgia. But it also points to them having a much deeper set of memories than we usually think of them as having.
For what it’s worth my dog got loose once and walked himself through the forest to the dog park on his own like we would do together. So he must of been thinking about past fun with other dogs and wanted more with or without me.
I’m not even aware of a scientific definition of nostalgia, or any way to verify detect its presence. Which means that afaik, there’s no way to know what they do and don’t experience in that regard.
However, I’ve been around a lot of dogs over the years. One of the things that’s pretty consistent is that, while their memory is better than they get credit for, they don’t seem to have emotional responses to memory when it isn’t trauma related.
In other words, they don’t exhibit behaviors to indicate that they’re thinking about the past when engaging with something in the present. They seem to live in the present until and unless something happens that sets off a fear response related to past events.
That being said, I have also had a dog react strongly when the name of another animal was used in their presence, when that other animal was no longer in their life. The dog in specific that I saw this in would spend time after hearing the name looking for the missing animal, and eventually settle down extra close to people and exhibit behaviors that mimic sadness behaviors when humans do them. But it never insured lasted for long, and anything positive at all would break them out of it immediately.
That isn’t the same as nostalgia. I’m using it as an example of why I don’t think they experience nostalgia. But it also points to them having a much deeper set of memories than we usually think of them as having.
For what it’s worth my dog got loose once and walked himself through the forest to the dog park on his own like we would do together. So he must of been thinking about past fun with other dogs and wanted more with or without me.