I don't think we have any way to know.
My dog definitely remembers and gets excited about places when going back after years. Does he think about those places otherwise? Probably not
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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I had a dog named Ellie. She had this little whimper moan thing she would do when she wanted something, and you had to go through the The List™ to determine what it was.
"Is her hungry?"
"Does her want a to-to" (toy)
Et cetera.
She wouldn't stop her whimper until you said the right item.
One time I had exhausted The List™ and was just trying random things because the whimpering was getting a little old at this point and I was desperate. So I asked "do you wanna go see the kitty balls?"
The kitty balls we a collection of stray cats at a Walmart we lived near nearly a decade prior. She had not been to see the kitty balls in at least 8 years.
She lost her fucking mind. Jumping up and down (not an easy task on an old girl with messed up legs from getting hit by a car), barking, spinning around. I loaded her up in the car and drove two hours so she could stare out the window at stray cats in the back corner of a Walmart parking lot.
I miss her a lot. And apparently, she missed the kitty balls
That's like the most touching thing i ever ever heard. I love it.
Aww. Ellie brought us a lot of joy. Endless, until the end. Sweetest baby. She would love that you were touched by that haha
Where do you think he’s running in his dreams.
Nostalgia is a nuanced word that takes some thought to explain, and we can't really communicate with them to ask the kinds of questions we need to in order to get that answer.
But it's well documented that dogs remember humans and other dogs for their entire lives, and that in my opinion does indicate some kind of retrospection.
Whether they feel it the same way we feel it is something we can't know. But they probably think about it from time to time if it's not overwritten by new memories.
I'm not even aware of a scientific definition of nostalgia, or any way to verify detect its presence. Which means that afaik, there's no way to know what they do and don't experience in that regard.
However, I've been around a lot of dogs over the years. One of the things that's pretty consistent is that, while their memory is better than they get credit for, they don't seem to have emotional responses to memory when it isn't trauma related.
In other words, they don't exhibit behaviors to indicate that they're thinking about the past when engaging with something in the present. They seem to live in the present until and unless something happens that sets off a fear response related to past events.
That being said, I have also had a dog react strongly when the name of another animal was used in their presence, when that other animal was no longer in their life. The dog in specific that I saw this in would spend time after hearing the name looking for the missing animal, and eventually settle down extra close to people and exhibit behaviors that mimic sadness behaviors when humans do them. But it never insured lasted for long, and anything positive at all would break them out of it immediately.
That isn't the same as nostalgia. I'm using it as an example of why I don't think they experience nostalgia. But it also points to them having a much deeper set of memories than we usually think of them as having.
For what it’s worth my dog got loose once and walked himself through the forest to the dog park on his own like we would do together. So he must of been thinking about past fun with other dogs and wanted more with or without me.
Member that time I pissed on the bed? That was the good time.
Yeah! I member!
Nostalgia is entirely a subjective experience. Even if your dog would tell you that it does you'd still have to take their word for it.
Other human beings are the same problem, no one can tell how others really feel. Let's get solipsism out of the way, so that we can talk practically.
Human beings share a lot of genetics and brain functions - we can study that. And they share a lot of genetics and brain functions with dogs too! I don't think nostalgia in dogs has been studied yet, but I do think we can get an answer one day.
I mean, there's a good chance dogs can experience nostalgia. I'd say that it's even likely. However, my point is that we can't know for sure and I'd argue that we may not ever find out. Nostalgia is a subjective experience that appears in consciousness and just like consciousness itself, there zero evidence of it in the world outside of your own experience of it. How would you study something that can't even be detected?
I'd study it in humans first - the advantage is they can talk. I'd study the way brain works in nostalgia feeling humans. Then I'd try to find the same or similar functionality in dog brains (which are fortunately similar enough, because dogs are evolutionarily relatively close to humans).
Let me again state that feelings are subjective even in humans and you could argue that what others really experience can be different even though it manifests the same externally. I'm knowingly ignoring this phylosofical side of the problem and I'm proposing a practical scientific way to approach it.
People speculate that animals like elephants mourn their dead. I don't really know how they prove it though.
Mourning seems related to nostalgia.
They can prove it, because elephants have clear burials rituals https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/49011/20240301/grieving-giants-indian-study-reveals-asian-elephants-unique-burial-rituals.htm