I used to notice it with my dog Jaws: Whenever I would walk in the door brooding after a bad day, he would seem… off somehow. I guess you could classify it as clingier. More restless. I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination or maybe there was something more to his behavior.
As it turns out, it probably wasn’t all in my head.
A growing body of research points to the surprisingly sophisticated ways dogs pick up on human stress, whether it’s reading our facial expressions and body language or detecting actual chemical changes tied to stress hormones (!).
What does all of this mean? Dogs may not literally “catch” anxiety in an infectious sense, but the science suggests they experience “emotional contagion” right alongside us.
Do dogs actually pick up on our stress?
According to the experts I polled, yes… and our pups probably pick up on it more than most of us realize.
“Dogs are extremely intuitive and are able to interpret human feelings through facial expression, vocal tone, body language cues, and even by picking up scents associated with cortisol and stress hormones,” says Dr. Stephanie Liff, veterinarian and advisor to pet wellness company Spot & Tango.
Yep, you read that right: our dogs can smell when we’re stressed.
“Research has shown that dogs can actually distinguish the odor of a stressed person from a relaxed one and respond differently. So when you come home still stewing over a work conflict, your dog may be picking up on signals you don’t even realize you’re sending,” elaborates Liff.
And this doesn’t just happen during isolated moments. A widely cited 2019 study published in Scientific Reports found that dogs’ long-term cortisol levels closely mirrored those of their owners.
A 2025 study found that work-related stress in humans may “cross over” to their dogs, particularly when owners continue mentally replaying workplace stress at home.
“What’s interesting about this study is that job stress alone wasn’t the whole story,” says Liff. “The key factor was work-related rumination, meaning owners who kept mentally replaying their work stress at home. Dogs are attuned to our behavioral and physiological cues, and when we’re mentally checked out and emotionally preoccupied, they notice.”
How exactly do they sense human stress?
Here’s the thing: Dogs have evolved alongside us for thousands of years. It makes sense that, by now, they’ve adapted to become exceptionally skilled social observers. I can genuinely just glance at my dog sometimes, and I swear she can tell what I’m thinking.
According to Dr. Hilary Humm-Beatty, veterinarian at Embrace Pet Insurance, researchers believe that two pathways are likely happening simultaneously. “One pathway is direct transmission, where the dog feels the stress of their companion — similar to empathy,” explains Humm-Beatty. The other is indirect transmission, where stress influences the human’s behavior and the dog is picking up on behavioral cues from their owner.”
So, with the latter, your pup could be responding to changes in routine, tension, and your emotional availability.
Or, as Dr. Kathryn Dench, chief scientific advisor at Paw Origins, put it: Dogs are essentially “constantly taking emotional ‘weather readings’ from their environment — if the forecast is stormy, they adapt accordingly.”
And, sure, sometimes that adaptation can look a lot like stress.
What are some signs your dog may be absorbing stress?
Just as with people, not every dog responds to stress in the same way. However, experts say that some dogs become noticeably more anxious when their humans are under chronic stress. Possible signs they’ve picked up some of that stress include pacing, whining, hypervigilance, clinginess, restlessness, changes in appetite, destructive behavior, difficulty settling, and increased barking or reactivity.
“In households where anxiety is a persistent issue, I would estimate that at least 60–70% of dogs show some corresponding behavioral or physiological signs,” says Dench.
But this all comes with a pretty big PSA: If you’re noticing these signs in your dog, that doesn’t mean you’re causing your dog harm. You are not “to blame.” Seriously, you have enough to worry about; don’t add this to the list.
“What’s important is that this doesn’t mean anxious owners are ‘causing harm’ in a blame-based sense,” Dench reassures. “Rather, it highlights how closely bonded dogs are to us.”
Can dogs reduce human stress, too?
I mean, anyone who’s lucky enough to have a dog in their life already knows the answer to this, right?
“There’s uplifting news on the other side of this: Dogs have also been shown to actively reduce stress in their humans, like increasing dopamine and oxytocin, lowering cortisol levels, and even improving blood pressure,” says Liff, adding, “The relationship really does go both ways.”
That may help explain why so many people instinctively turn to their pets during difficult periods of life. Dogs are pretty much our emotional co-regulators!
So, what’s an anxious dog owner to do?
Do not, I repeat, treat this research as an invitation to spiral into guilt about stressing out your dog. The experts I spoke to all insisted that the opposite approach is more helpful.
“Do not beat yourself up,” says Humm-Beatty. “This just creates more stress for you and for your dog. Be gentle with yourself! All the things that are good for your own stress and that make you mentally healthier and stronger are, based on all this research, good for your dog too.”
Instead, focus on consistency, regulation, and shared calming activities. You can do this by maintaining predictable routines, prioritizing walks and playtime, using calm (or at least neutral) departures and arrivals, creating quiet spaces where your dog can decompress, and practicing grounding exercises together.
“If it’s hard to do these good things for yourself,” Humm-Beatty adds, “maybe knowing how much it will help your dog will be an added motivation.”
Liff also recommends creating transition rituals between work and home — even something as simple as a dedicated walk after work can help interrupt stress rumination for both humans and dogs.
Ultimately, says Dench, the science just reinforces something many dog owners already feel intuitively: “Dogs don’t just live alongside us… they experience life with us.”