Stop touching your dog or looking at it. Think about your friends, family, and partners. You might think dog kisses are disgusting. This is a very important question, because kissing dogs along with blowing in their faces, hugging them, looming over … According to Ebbecke, "long, slurpy kisses that are accompanied by a soft, … Kisses are well-accepted displays of affections between humans. Why It Seems Like Your Pup Understands If you've spent your pup's entire life showering them with kisses every single day, they probably return the favor with a few licks. Placing a paw on top of another dog may look like a sweet, puppy hug, but it’s actually a gesture of dominance. Licking is an instinctual canine behavior that soothes and deepens social bonds between mother dogs and their pups, and among littermates. Dogs do not have an instinctive understanding of kisses. not with a gentle touch) which is why they often end up getting bit. Dog kisses usually mean exactly what you guess they do—your dog thinks you’re the cat’s meow. So, does your dog like kisses? For dogs, physical presence has a number of other implications. The fact is that dogs and humans have comparable amounts of bacteria in their mouths, and the chances of getting sick from your dog’s kisses are low. The only time dogs will put their faces that close to each other and lick is when they are grooming one another. Turn your head away. Still, the CDC warns of the possibility of transferring diseases mouth-to-mouth between pets and their human parents (like … "The meaning of a dog lick can depend on how the licks are offered to their people," Dana Ebbecke, animal behavior counselor at the ASPCA Adoption Center, told The Dodo.. They can’t speak so all they do is observe our body language. Dogs often give us an irresistible urge to pet and pamper them and this often entails kissing them, but do dogs really like being kissed? Or, you might just feel like enough is enough. Some dogs don’t mind snuggles or kisses, but even that can become too much to a dog who values a little space. via GIPHY. Although we could argue that dogs lick us to reduce our stress levels, as their Mother’s did for them, it is more likely that we have inadvertently taught our pooches that we like it when they kiss us, therefore they continue to do so. They’ll probably always find it a little weird that you put your face so close to them without grooming them. But, not every dog loves the sensation. It simply isn’t in their genes to be able to automatically recognize what in the world their human buddies are doing with their lips. Getting your dog to stop licking you (and others) is usually a matter of denying attention when it does it. All dogs think differently, so your furry friend may react differently to your kisses than another dog would to their owner's. So, it makes sense we kiss pups to show them how much we care. 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