How Do Dogs Choose Their Friends?
📝 Summary
Dogs pick friends through body language and shared positive experience — not just food. The play bow and fast tail wag are clear signs of friendship.
1 Overview
The meaning of friends
As noted, for humans friends mean more than the word.
For dogs, friends are just the literal meaning — nothing more.
Dogs befriend peers and other humans; beyond instinct, credit our ancestors’ selective breeding for dogs that stay close to people and kin.
Do dogs know what a friend is?
Of course — many animals build varied social bonds, and thanks to a dog’s brain similarity to ours, they befriend not just people and peers but many animals.
Does food make you a dog’s friend?
No. A dog remembers you fed it, but also who truly treats it well. Don’t fear it forgetting you — opinions vary on how long, but dogs remember owners for a long time.
Back to point: to befriend someone else’s dog, beyond food, invest in play and petting — then the dog remembers you as a friend.
How to know a dog sees you as a friend?
Dogs choose friends via body language and greet them so. Through its special body language, you’ll know if it’s your friend.
The common move is the ‘play bow’ — front legs low, rear high — a greeting between friends. Two strange dogs also use it to propose friendship.
A rarer move: very fast tail wagging, maybe special sounds, with a bit of restlessness.
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