Can Dogs Laugh?

When I was in 8th grade, my family decided to get a dog. We’d been without a pet for about a year and we were never really fond of that. I mean, there was one point where we had a dog, a cat, two birds, two fish, two goats, a Guinea pig and a rabbit all at the same time. Having no pets was too weird for us. My parents decided on an English Springer Spaniel named Tuxedo who looked as if there weren’t a single thought behind his puppy eyes.

As time went on, training him and loving him, he became my best friend. My theory of him having no thoughts, however, was proven to be true. I look at him and his human-like eyes and I see nothing behind them. Now four years old and the theory gets proven over and over again when he does almost anything. He’ll flop his big head around, roll around in mud or eat flowers.

My favorite, however, is when he knows he did something absurdly stupid and he almost smiles. It’s like he knows how to laugh. Just the other day I took him outside because he loves the snow. Born in the winter, it’s naturally his favorite season. I was throwing snowballs at him and he was trying (and failing) to catch them in his mouth. Every time he’d miss and the snowball would go into the snow below him, he would just stick his entire head into the snow like a scared ostrich. When he picks his head back up, his grins and breathes quickly. He looks right at me to make sure I saw him and runs at me wagging his stubby tail as fast as he can. There’s no doubt in my mind that he thinks it’s the funniest thing ever.

Tuxedo understands human laughter, too. When he does something that results in our laughter, he gets so excited and jumps around in circles of joy. I truly believe he’s on this planet to make people happy despite some of the bad things he does. Just yesterday, I was eating a pizza, and he jumped up onto my lap and just took the slice right out of my hands. He was so polite about it too. He didn’t do it with any aggression towards me, he just took it and jumped off my lap to go eat it. I was in absolute shock, unable to react at all. He ate it up in two huge bites, then looked up at me laughing as if he’d just pulled the funniest prank in the book, and not going to lie, it was hilarious.

After being my best friend for four years, Tux has taught me how to laugh, and taught me that e can laugh too. It’s very unique that dogs know so much about emotions and can feel most of the same ones human can. He continues to make me laugh everyday, including right now while he’s staring at me and waiting for me to take his collar off so he can go to sleep. He knows once I take it off, it’s time for bed. I look forward to many years of laughing with my puppy.