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I'd say so, but I think they experience that love in a far less complicated way that people do!
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i think they can. i believe any and all living things have the capacity to love in some way, shape or form
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I like to think my dog loves me. She's very protective, and she's ready to go with me anywhere, anytime. And she's always happy to see me. She waits for me to come home every day. My husband says she just likes me because I feed her. He's cynical!
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Years ago, a friend and his brother argued about this question. The brother, Matt, insisted that his three-legged dog (back when he was squatting in a brokedown apartment in a college town) had loved him. The three-legged dog was a stray Matt had found one snowy winter and brought back to the apartment with the broken windows and air so cold the toilet froze over. "That dog loved me!" he insisted. Dave kept saying back, "There's no way that dog loved you. It was a dog. Only humans can love." "How long did you have the dog?" I asked during an unexpected lull in their shouting. "What? Oh. He ran away," Matt said. We laughed and laughed. We agreed that life was pretty bad for you if your three-legged dog abandoned you. I don't know if that dog loved Matt. Probably not. That dog was too smart. Ha. Epilogue. Matt's fortunes improved to the extent that his limited ambition allowed, and he and his wife and their children live in a house with windows and heat and air conditioning and a large yard. They have a four-legged dog that loves them all but loves Matt more than the others, says Matt, and a hamster that doesn't know it has a name. Dave is still not convinced that dogs can love.
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I had two dogs once. The older one died, and the younger one had a heart attack a week later. I think dogs can have very strong emotions. Same for cats (although they show it differently).
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Yes. It's an attachment. My dad fell on his rollerblades and my dog came over and licked his face. Dogs do feel love.
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If dogs are just mirrors, why do they have such a positive effect on many fatally ill people?
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Of course. Any alternative(or ulterior) motive that can be ascribed to a dog's love can also be tied to a human's love.
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My father had a dog when he was a kid. It was a stray that his family found. It essentially became HIS dog, and he took care of it, built it a doghouse in the yard and took it everywhere. One day, these three kids were bullying my dad for no reason than just because, and the dog clamped its teeth into the main bully and started running in circles and barking at them so my dad could run away. Once the dog saw my dad was across the street and a had a good lead, he ran after him and they went home. Sure that kind of devotion to its owner might have been a pack instinct, but instinct or not, the dog protected my dad. It's love.
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