The 'best' way to apologise to your dog if you step on their paw by accident

We've all done it, but accidentally stepping on your dog's paw and hearing them yelp in pain is a horrible moment that can make us feel guilty for hurting our poor pet.

But scientists have discovered how to say sorry to your furry friend in a way they'll understand. According to a study in Animal Cognition, using a baby voice, also known as 'dog-directed speech' (DDS), can calm your pet after an unfortunate paw-squishing incident, reports The Mirror.

The research involved 37 dogs whose owners volunteered them for the experiment, with some spoken to in a regular tone of voice, and others in DDS. The pups addressed with DDS seemed to understand their owners more.

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A researcher wrote: "Overall, the results of this study suggest that naturalistic DDS, comprising of both dog-directed [speech patterns] and dog-relevant content words, improves dogs' attention and may strengthen the affiliative bond between humans and their pets."

So next time you tread on your pooch's paw, soothe them with a gentle, high-pitched apology, check for any sore bits, and give them an ice pack if there's any redness or swelling.

And The Royal Society have made another dog-related discovery. They revealed that our canines may be smart enough to understand human intentions through emotional cues, reported Surrey Live.

Scientists believe that dogs are able to understand that their owners did not mean to cause them harm, and appear to forgive them.

A study on canine behaviour states: "The perception of emotional expressions allows animals to evaluate the social intentions and motivations of each other.

"This usually takes place within species; however, in the case of domestic dogs, it might be advantageous to recognise the emotions of humans as well as other dogs. In this sense, the combination of visual and auditory cues to categorise others' emotions facilitates the information processing and indicates high-level cognitive representations."

"Using a cross-modal preferential looking paradigm, we presented dogs with either human or dog faces with different emotional valences (happy/playful versus angry/aggressive) paired with a single vocalisation from the same individual with either a positive or negative valence or Brownian noise."

"Dogs looked significantly longer at the face whose expression was congruent to the valence of vocalisation, for both conspecifics and heterospecifics, an ability previously known only in humans.

"These results demonstrate that dogs can extract and integrate bimodal sensory emotional information, and discriminate between positive and negative emotions from both humans and dogs."

And social media users have been sharing their own ways of making amends with their pets, with one Reddit user commenting: "If you just talk nice to them and pet them and maybe give them a treat it's fine. Dogs accidentally hurt each other when they are playing and they get over it right away."

Another chimed in: "You just apologise the same way you would apologise to a child or when you hit someone by mistake. Petting him like crazy and talking with a comforting voice should be enough. Dogs understand mistakes."

A third added their insight: "You have effectively apologised, believe it or not. Dogs, cats, and pigs to I believe, are physically social animals and understand apologetic petting. They do it to each other all the time and they realise it's a mistake once you do so."

Next time you accidentally hurt your pooch, remember that they'll understand your mistake and accept your apology.

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