Blog - Sixth Sense of Dog Ownership

The Sixth Sense of Dog Ownership

I stood there for a moment, slightly confused, before deciding that I must have dreamt it. There had been no crying dog and my brain had, apparently, manufactured the whole thing, so I went back to bed.

Within five minutes, I heard the unmistakable sound of a dog being sick.

This time, I was definitely awake.

Faelan was bringing up bile and, when I took him outside, he was very loose again. Once he was cleaned up and settled, I returned to bed, but the experience had left me wondering whether I really had dreamt that he was crying.

Had he made some tiny sound that my sleeping brain picked up before my conscious mind knew what it had heard, or had I somehow known that something was wrong before it happened?

In other words, do we develop a sixth sense where our dogs are concerned?

The brain does not entirely switch off

Sleep is not quite the sensory blackout we sometimes imagine it to be because, while we are asleep, the brain continues to monitor what is happening around us and does not treat every sound equally. Research has shown that the sleeping brain continues to process external information and responds differently depending upon the significance of what it hears.

External sounds can also be incorporated into dreams, which means that a real sound in the room may be picked up by the sleeping brain and woven into whatever story it happens to be creating at the time.

That gives us one very plausible explanation for what happened.

As his nausea was building, Faelan may have shifted position, swallowed repeatedly, licked his lips, altered his breathing or made a very quiet sound. I may not have consciously heard any of it, but my brain could have registered that something was different and translated those subtle signs into the sound of a dog crying.

By the time I reached the office, he had settled again, but five minutes later his stomach took over.

It felt as though I had known something was about to happen when, in fact, part of my brain may already have detected the early signs.

The brain’s filtering system

The part of the brain involved in this is often referred to as the reticular activating system, or RAS, which is a network within the brainstem that plays an important role in wakefulness, arousal and attention. It helps the brain move between sleeping and waking and contributes to our ability to notice what matters.

Calling it the brain’s filter is useful shorthand, although it does not work alone. The thalamus, cortex and several attention networks are also involved in deciding which of the enormous amount of incoming sensory information should be prioritised, so it is probably better to think of the system as a security team rather than a single gatekeeper.

Most familiar noises are allowed to pass without disturbing us, whether that is the hum of the heating, traffic in the distance or the normal sound of a dog changing position. A noise that does not fit the expected pattern, however, may be treated very differently.

When you have lived with a dog for years, you become familiar with the rhythm of their breathing, the way they move, the sound of their claws on the floor and the subtle difference between an ordinary sigh and the first signs that something is not quite right. You may not be consciously listening, but your brain has learned what is normal and, therefore, what is not.

Crucially, Faelan had already been poorly. I went to bed knowing that he had an upset tummy, so my attention system was probably primed to respond to anything suggesting that he needed me.

Perhaps it is not a supernatural sixth sense after all, but five ordinary senses that have become exceptionally well trained.

Is it like the connection between a mother and child?

There are some obvious similarities, as brain-imaging studies suggest that the sound of a baby crying activates networks associated with attention, emotion, motivation and caregiving in the mother’s brain.

That does not mean that a mother literally knows what is going to happen before it happens, but it does show that the brain assigns particular importance to signals from an individual for whom we feel responsible.

Caregiving changes what matters to us.

A parent may sleep through traffic, the television or someone snoring beside them, yet wake instantly when their child makes an unusual sound. Those of us who live closely with dogs may develop a similar form of selective vigilance, learning their routines and tiny behavioural changes without ever realising quite how much information we have absorbed.

Dogs and their owners can also become physiologically attuned to one another. Research has found associations between the long-term cortisol levels of dogs and their owners, while another study involving dogs from cooperative breeds found that heart rate variability in dogs and owners was linked during periods of interaction and rest. The researchers described this as physiological and emotional co-modulation.

A well-known study also found evidence of an oxytocin feedback loop associated with mutual gazing between dogs and their owners. Oxytocin is involved in social bonding, although calling it simply the love hormone does not really do justice to its much broader role within the body.

None of these studies proves the existence of a sixth sense, but they do show that the connection between a dog and their person is not simply something sentimental that we have invented. The bond has measurable behavioural, hormonal and physiological components.

Do we carry our dogs’ DNA?

This was the rabbit hole I really wanted to disappear down.

The phenomenon I was remembering in relation to mothers and children is called microchimerism. During pregnancy, cells can cross the placenta in both directions, with some fetal cells remaining within the mother’s body for decades while maternal cells may also persist within her child.

In one study, fetal progenitor cells were detected in maternal blood up to 27 years after pregnancy, while another detected male microchimerism in several regions of the brains of 37 of the 59 women examined.

That is quite extraordinary, and it raises some fascinating questions about whether the connection between a mother and child might continue at a level we do not yet fully understand. My mind naturally wandered towards quantum entanglement, where particles can remain correlated across distance.

It is an intriguing comparison, but there is currently no evidence that microchimeric cells remain entangled in a way that allows information to pass between a mother and child, nor is there evidence of an equivalent process between dogs and their owners.

We certainly exchange biological material with our dogs. People living with dogs have been found to share more of their skin microbiota, and DNA can be transferred between people, animals, clothing and surfaces. However, traces of DNA found on skin, clothing or dog hair are very different from living cells becoming established inside someone’s tissues.

As fascinating as the idea is, there is currently no evidence that living with, touching or loving a dog causes canine cells to take up residence in the human brain. That does not mean science already has every answer, simply that microchimerism and quantum entanglement remain interesting avenues of thought rather than evidenced explanations for that feeling of knowing something is wrong.

So, did I know that Faelan was going to be sick?

I cannot know for certain. It may have been coincidence, or I may have dreamt about a crying dog because I had gone to bed already worried about his tummy.

He may have made a tiny sound that became incorporated into my dream, or my brain may have detected a combination of movement, breathing and sound that was too subtle to reach conscious awareness but important enough to wake me.

That final explanation feels the most likely.

Perhaps the sixth sense of dog ownership is not an additional, mysterious sense at all, but what happens when attention, experience, responsibility and affection become so closely intertwined that we respond before we consciously understand what we have noticed.

We learn the sound of our dogs being well, which means that sometimes, even while we are asleep, we notice when something is not quite right.

And, every now and again, that really does feel like magic.

References

Ameen, M. S., Heib, D. P. J., Blume, C. and Schabus, M. (2022). The brain selectively tunes to unfamiliar voices during sleep. The Journal of Neuroscience, 42(9), 1791–1803.

Arguinchona, J. H. and Tadi, P. (2023). Neuroanatomy, reticular activating system. StatPearls.

Bianchi, D. W., Zickwolf, G. K., Weil, G. J., Sylvester, S. and DeMaria, M. A. (1996). Male fetal progenitor cells persist in maternal blood for as long as 27 years postpartum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 93(2), 705–708.

Chan, W. F. N., Gurnot, C., Montine, T. J., Sonnen, J. A., Guthrie, K. A. and Nelson, J. L. (2012). Male microchimerism in the human female brain. PLOS ONE, 7(9), e45592.

Koskela, A. et al. (2024). Behavioral and emotional co-modulation during dog-owner interaction measured by heart rate variability and activity. Scientific Reports, 14, 25201.

McFadden, J. and Al-Khalili, J. (2018). The origins of quantum biology. Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 474, 20180674.

Musser, E. D., Kaiser-Laurent, H. and Ablow, J. C. (2012). The neural correlates of maternal sensitivity: An fMRI study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2(4), 428–436.

Nagasawa, M. et al. (2015). Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds. Science, 348(6232), 333–336.

Salvesen, L., Capriglia, E., Dresler, M. and Bernardi, G. (2024). Influencing dreams through sensory stimulation: A systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 74, 101908.

Song, S. J. et al. (2013). Cohabiting family members share microbiota with one another and with their dogs. eLife, 2, e00458.

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first published 23 July 2026

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