You know the scenario. You come home and your dog has made a mess on the rug, or chewed the corner off the coffee table, or eaten the lasagna you had sitting on top of the stove to cool. You immediately give your dog the eye and, not surprisingly, he gets that guilt-striken look on his face and starts slinking away.

"A-ha!" you exclaim, "You know what you did! You just couldn't help yourself, and now you feel guilty!"

Going with the moment, you punish your dog with a swat to the head with a newspaper, or a stern "No! Bad dog! Baaaaaad dog! You don't eat food off the counter!" Or maybe you even banish him to another room with the door shut, to really show him who's boss. "He knew what he did," you think afterwards, feeling confident that you taught him a lesson he won't soon forget.

...Or did you?

The Unmistakable Face of Guilt

We've all seen that guilt-striken face, haven't we? The one that says, "I did it, I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have." There's just one problem... dogs don't feel guilt! Guilt is an exclusively human emotion, so while it's not surprising that we ascribe our emotions onto our dogs, we are mistaken in doing so. Dogs don't have morals, and they certainly don't have moral dilemmas. They act on instincts, impulses, and conditioning. If a dog gets into the lasagna that was sitting on top of the stove, you can be sure that he enjoyed every moment of it and walked away from the scene of the crime feeling nothing but a full, satisfied belly. And perhaps a feeling of incredible luck.

That "look of guilt" is nothing but your dog's reaction to your upset/angry/annoyed demeanor and body language. A dog's first language is body language