Do dogs have a sense of humour?
Much of our bind with our dogs comes from the fact that they are the playful and uninhibited creatures that we could be if we weren’t so worried about what other people thought. Dogs have a playfulness that we have actually bred into them by creating animals with minds that remain much like those of wolf puppies all their lives. Their juvenile minds make dogs want to play and do silly things that make us laugh, and we tend to equate this with a sense of humour. Not all breeds are created equally, however, and some are more playful than others. Two animal behaviourists from the University of California at Davis, Dr. Benjamin Hart and Dr. Lynnette Hart, had a group of experts rank 56 different breeds of dogs in terms of their playfulness. By “playfulness” they meant things like a willingness to chase balls, Kongs or Frisbees, to engage in hide-and-seek, and so forth. I suppose that nobody would be too surprised to find that the Irish Setter, English Springer Spaniel, Airedale, Golden Ret
