Do Dogs Feel Disappointment?

Just a few days ago, I came back from school. It is early in the fall now and the leaves here have not changed their colors yet. The weather is still nice on most days.

I am at my parents’ house, on the front porch, lying on my back. The upper half of my body is shadowed by the porch-roof, but below my waist I can feel the sun shining softly on me.

I have been out here for almost a half-hour.

My dog has rested the bottom of her snout on my shoulder, and her neck is nestled firmly into the pit of my arm. Her name is Cuddles, my little black-and-tan wiener-dog. She is getting rather old.

When I was younger, I used to think that ‘dachshund’ was German for ‘wienerdog’, but I know now that it does not translate literally. No — it actually means ‘badger-dog’.

Before I first went to college, I lived in this house with my parents for almost eleven years. It is a big brick house sitting on the top of a moderate, rural hill. Not many people live around here. There are probably less than ten other households in the surrounding square-mile.

I try to spend as much time as I can with my dog while I’m here, before I have to leave again. I miss her very much when I’m away. Sometimes, when I talk to my mom over the phone, she tells me that my dog misses me too, or that at least Cuddles acts like she misses me.

As I stay still, she pulls away from me to toddle off to the porch-ledge and gaze out into the front field. She does this every few minutes before coming back to me, in a little cycle. She goes to the ledge and scans the treelines that bound the meadow our house is in, always left-to-right, always slow and thorough.

When she does this, her pose gets all rigid and sturdy. Like she’s alert. Like she’s on guard.

I guess Cuddles is protecting me. It makes me smile.

As she turns around and walks slowly back, I see something in her tired gaze that I have also seen in the eyes of other old dogs. I don’t have an exact word for it, but I think it’s like a kind of dignity, or something approaching dignity, and that whatever it is, it’s something well-weathered and worn, and it’s like it can’t be taken away from them, like they will have this thing with them forever, no matter what, even after they pass on.

It has been a long time now since I first noticed this look in her eyes. Since the start of this year, her eyes have also grown cloudy. Even though she still likes to look out at the trees, I don’t think she sees well at all anymore.

Cuddles had a brother that died three years ago. His name was Rex, and he was a shade lighter than the usual dachshund brown. He was a fat, lazy, and often nervous dog.

His sister was never like him at all—often, as she chased wildly after a rabbit or a deer, or howled at the occasional car passing by in the distance, he could be found sitting down somewhere, all relaxed, not caring to join, just watching her like she was performing for his amusement.

My dad used to say that Cuddles was the one born with all of the personality, that her brother was no good and lazy. I think he was just frustrated that Rex didn’t chase away the deer from his tomato garden like his sister would, that he’d sometimes just watch them from a distance while they ate my dad’s plants.

I liked him very much, though.

If you looked at him with expectation or made your voice reproachful, it seemed like he understood you, because he’d look up at you with these adorable, sad little eyes that told you he was ashamed of his own nature, his laziness, but that he couldn’t help it, that he still meant well.

For all his faults, I believe he was an innocent and kind animal.

His sister watched while we dug his grave.

It hurt to look at her. That day, for the first time in a long time, I felt my heart swell somewhere between the rhythm of each shovel hitting the dirt and the confused stares of the sister he left behind.

I think that was the first time I saw that tired look in her eyes.

Now, in the present, she is next to me, looking through the glass midsection of the front door behind me, evidently watching something. It opens abruptly, and my mom steps out.

She is going to get the mail.

Cuddles gets very excited when my mom comes outside, because my mom usually comes out once or twice a day to give her a dog treat and to pet on her. My dad says she spoils the dog.

As my mom begins walking to the mailbox at the end of our long driveway, Cuddles follows her, eager and anxious for a treat. Only a short way down the path, she starts to slow down and trail behind.

As she comes to a stop, I think she has finally realized that there is no treat for her this time. She is standing still now, staring at my mom’s figure receding in the distance, being left behind. I see this and ask myself, knowing well the answer: do dogs feel disappointment?