A pet owner has shared footage of her rescue dog’s dramatic reaction to being denied a taste of her boyfriend’s snack.
Dogs love their food and usually ours, for that matter. It’s an obsession that has led many to wonder whether dogs are simply engaging with humans in the knowledge they will be well fed if they do so.
The reality is a little more complex than that, though. In 2015, a study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience attempted to assess whether dogs were solely motivated by food. As part of the study, 15 dogs underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) scan to see how their brain reacted to the offers of either social interaction, a food reward or nothing.
Researchers found that the caudate nucleus, the area of the canine brain associated with positive expectations, was active to a similar or even greater level in 13 out of the 15 dogs when receiving praise compared with when they were given food. That suggests dogs love their human companions as much if not more than their food.
Kyle, a seven-year-old rescue, has plenty of reasons to love his owner, Rachel Hill, a 29-year-old artist from Houston. “I adopted him when he was only a few months old when I was in college,” Hill told Newsweek. “It was pretty spontaneous for an adoption and I feel like we kind of grew up together!”
From the very beginning, Kyle was an affectionate dog, unafraid of letting his emotions show. “I already had a cat at the time, Daisy, and she was an older orange rescue cat who I think made Kyle genuinely believe he was small too,” Hill said. “So he often gets on your lap or perches next to you as if he’s just a little baby cat.”
Alongside snuggles with his humans, Kyle’s other big passion is snacks. Sometimes they are his snacks, but quite often they are the ones Hill and her boyfriend Colin have. “He loves snuggles and snacks, that’s for sure his top two,” Hill said.
Most of the time they are happy to share, wherever possible, but everyone likes to keep their food to themselves on occasion. Hill and her boyfriend certainly do. Unfortunately, Kyle doesn’t take kindly to the word “no.”
In fact, in Kyle’s world, the denial of a tasty human treat is tantamount to a dagger to the heart, or at least that’s the impression he gives in a video Hill shared to her TikTok @rachyhstudio.
In the clip, Kyle can be seen sitting on the couch next to Colin, who is eating. Kyle appears wounded, lolloping on the arm of the couch, away from his human friend, evidently upset at his apparent refusal to share.
“He will literally act like he’s dying if you don’t give him a little taste of your snacky snack,” Hill wrote alongside the clip. As the video ends, Colin can be seen attempting to make amends with Kyle, but his dog pal would rather continue to pout.
It’s a hilarious reaction and one Hill suggests Kyle might have picked up from someone else in the house. “Not going to lie, I act the same way when Colin doesn’t immediately share his snacks with me too,” Hill said. “He might have gotten that one from me.”
Whatever the truth, this is not the first time Kyle has demonstrated a flair for the dramatic and something tells us it won’t be the last either.
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