jealous dogs

I’ve had a word with Ralph the Jack Russell about this story. He only got cross when I started talking to Wendy’s horse about it……

To legions of dog-owners, the finding will come as no surprise: it does not take much to make a dog feel jealous.

Researchers in the US studied 36 dogs and found that most were indifferent when their owners ignored them and read aloud from a children’s pop-up book. But when the owners showered their attention on a stuffed dog – or even played with a bucket with a face painted on the side – the dogs’ behaviour changed dramatically.

Video footage showed that when owners petted the stuffed toy, which barked and wagged its tail for effect, their dogs growled more and sometimes snapped and forced their way between the toy and their owner. A quarter of the dogs snapped at the stuffed animal, while only one snapped at the book and the bucket.