Dogs are much happier than humans. Here’s why

Dogs love their lives more than we love ours. I think anyone who has lived with a dog will suspect this is true. A dog’s capacity for happiness is greater than ours. This does not mean that all dogs are happier than all humans. Any dog stuck in a miserable life or scarred by a malign past can certainly be miserable. It’s the capacity for happiness that is crucial.

Dogs are what we might call happiness adjacent. For us, being happy can be a long and difficult journey. Dogs get there much quicker than we do because they are never far from happiness in the first place. 

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Something is marginally positive if it is a good thing, but only just – where the scale of happiness versus unhappiness tips, barely, in favour of the former. Shadow, my German Shepherd, recently suffered a spinal embolism. For a while, his back legs were completely paralysed. The first thing he did in this newly paralysed state was to use his front legs to drag himself into the shade. Paralysed he may be, but at least he was out of the sun – and so marginally better off than when he was in the sun. 

I was reminded of the Greek cynic – Diogenes, nicknamed ‘the dog’ – who was once asked by Alexander the Great if there was anything he could do for him. His response: “Move, you’re blocking the sun”. Diogenes the dog and Shadow the dog harboured opposing attitudes towards the sun, but their opinion on the marginally positive was the same. 

Later that day, when the movement had started to return to Shadow’s legs, you could see him tottering happily around outside the vet’s office with my son, trying to jump on him. Crocked he may be, but, for him, being here is marginally better than being at home and, as such, for him, a source of the utmost delight. 

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Anyone can take delight in the super-positive. A big lottery win would make me happy. That’s easy. But taking delight in the marginally positive, that is something dogs do best. If I reacted the way Shadow did to the invitation to go on a mundane walk, or daily car trip to pick up my sons from school, you would conclude that I had indeed won the lottery.

To live your life such that even the marginally positive feels like a lottery win: that is a rare skill, beyond most humans but easy for dogs. That is why dogs are happier than we are. 

Why are dogs like this? I think the answer can be found in something that happened to us in our distant evolutionary past – the development of a particular form of consciousness. Reflection is the ability to think about yourself, about what you are doing and why you are doing it. We are very good at this, dogs far less so.

Once you can do this, your life splits into two. There is the life you live and the life you scrutinise – the life that you judge and evaluate, and over which you may agonise. 

A dog has only one life – the life he lives – and it is not surprising that he is able to love this one life more than we love our two lives. 

Mark Rowlands is professor chair of the philosophy department at the University of Miami.

His book, The Happiness of Dogs: Why The Unexamined Life Is Most Worth Living is out now (Granta, £16.99). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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