Your Dog Can Tell From Your Voice If You're Happy or Sad
The quickly emerging field of canine neuroscience has just provided evidence for something most dog owners have long known: based on the tone of your voice, it appears that dogs can tell if you're happy or sad.
Over the past few years at Eötvös Loránd University, in Hungary, a team of researchers has been using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) technology—which tracks blood flow to various areas of the brain, a sign of increased activity—to peer inside the minds of dogs. One of a handful of labs groups worldwide that's using the technology in this way, they've used positive reinforcement training to get a study group of 11 dogs to voluntarily enter the fMRI scanner and stay perfectly still for minutes at a time, which is necessary to get accurate readings.
Recently, they've experimented with playing different sounds to the dogs while they lie in the scanner. In a new paper, published today in the journal Current Biology, they show that the dogs' brains appear to have a dedicated area that displays more activity in response to voices (whether human speech or dogs barking) than other meaningless noises (such as glass breaking), and that part of this area shows more activity upon hearing an emotionally positive sound, as compared to a negative one.
Of course, it's unclear what's exactly going on in the dogs' minds when they hear these noises, but this suggests that dogs can distinguish a happy voice from a sad one.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/your-dog-can-tell-from-your-voice-if-youre-happy-or-sad-180949807/
No surprise to a lot of us, I know, but now science has confirmed it.
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We have four Chihuahuas. My partner is even-keeled. I can be a hot head. I will scream and rage, then it is out of my system. My partner, however, is usually very quiet and rarely raises his voice. Tonight, he was having to work from home, AGAIN (that's another story), he never really raised his voice but was quite irritated. Two chis hid behind me, shaking like leaves. The baby buried herself under the covers, and Voodoo (the male) curled up in a little ball in his "Toto" basket. I had to reassure them that "Daddy" wasn't mad at them. He had to love on them to get them to calm down. I can scream until the windows shake and they look at me as if to say, "meh." They do, however, respond when I am very sad. 
I will give your even-keeled partner and your distinguishing chihuahuas a break; yes INDEED 
sometimes just for fun 
She was around 13 and was such a sweet mild mannered dog, however, when I swore she would just start shaking.
So I made an effort to keep my swearing down, because I didn't like her getting like that. she was my pal.
Anyway, my GF and I were remodeling our house and I was hammering in a nail in a tight spot next to my thumb. I think you see where this is going.
I let out a "fuck!" at the top of my lungs when I hit it square with full force.
Poor little Rosie, from fright and as if on queue, pooped.
I felt so bad that I scared her so, but I also had to crack up that she had pooped on queue.
