Do Dogs Really Love Us? with Oprah and Dr. Carl Safina

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@Oprah?sub_confirmation=1 Oprah sits down with renowned ecologist Dr. Carl Safina, author of the New York Times bestseller Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, to explore our sacred connection with the animal world—especially our tight-knit relationships and bonds with our beloved dogs. Joining them is author and neuroscientist Dr. Gregory Berns, whose groundbreaking MRI research offers scientific proof that our dogs really do love us. Dr. Berns discusses his eye-opening books How Dogs Love Us and Cowpuppy. The episode also features extraordinary true stories of hero dogs who saved their owners’ lives. BUY THE BOOK! https://amzn.to/4fSI0Dw Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Oprah Podcast. I'm so glad you're spending your time here with us. I'm really, really excited for this episode because we're exploring an idea that I've wondered about. Maybe you have too, but I've wondered about this for years. Do our dogs share the same love for us as we have for them? Do dogs and other animals experience joy, grief, loneliness, even hope? Over the years, I've had 21 dogs, each one a unique member of my family who gave us so much love and so many memories. My guest says that dogs help make us the people we would like to be. Isn't that the truth? Carl Safina is a world renowned ecologist and conservationist

• 1:14Oprah Winfrey?

  who writes extensively, and may I say exquisitely too. Thank you. About the interior lives of animals, including his New York Times bestseller, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, which is just an absolutely fascinating read. Highly recommended. And your newest book, What Owls Know and What Humans Believe. Okay, can I tell you, welcome, first of all?

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Thanks so much for being here.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Fantastic to be here.

• 1:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, when I read, after reading this book, I had the most interesting dream about my former cocker spaniels that I had for 13 and 14 years in the 90s. Sophie and Solomon, that I took to work every day with them during the Oprah Show. And no matter where I was, they were either in a green room waiting. If it was Oscars, they were waiting backstage. Anyway, they passed away years ago, and I hadn't had a dream about them. And after reading this book and I had a dream that something had happened to Sophie had been injured. She was the black cocker and Solomon was my brown cocker. Sophie, they were together. Sophie had been injured.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  In the dream.

• 2:27Oprah Winfrey?

  In the dream. And I could see that she was injured. And I came up to Solomon and I said, tell me what happened. And he transmitted what had happened to me. And in the dream, because I have lucid dreams, in the dreams, I said, oh, I'm dreaming this because I just read about elephants communicating. Dr. Carl Safina is a renowned conservationist and passionate defender of animals in the natural world. Do they have their own consciousness? His work has earned many honors, including a MacArthur Genius Prize. Carl's beautiful writing encourages us to better understand our relationship to animals and our shared planet.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  If we're so powerful, why aren't we taking care of the miracle of the world that made us and maintains us?

• 3:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Our conversation about dogs included some truly heroic stories of dogs coming to their owner's rescue.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  I still get chills thinking about it. My house was filled with black smoke.

• 3:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Carl also delves deeper into the relational bond that connects all living creatures. That is powerful. That is powerful.

• 3:40Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, one of the things I loved when I was reading Beyond Words is that it's very clear that you recognize, not only recognize, but say that you believe that animals are different, but not less than us. What do we need to unlearn about our relationship to animals?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Yes, well.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  In a way, that is the exploration I went through when we raised this baby owl. And in this book.

• 4:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Which brings us to Alfie and me, yes.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Right? And so I've been with animals my whole life. I've had them, cared for them, trained them, been with them. And we raised this little wild owl, and I was so surprised at her relational capacity. She would sometimes come over and want to be stroked and lean into it, just like our dogs do. And I was saying, of all people, why am I surprised? Why don't I know? I think I'm tuned in, but why don't I know? That these creatures have these capacities for relationality? Which they have, they have that with their own families and their own lives.

• 4:55Oprah Winfrey?

  You knew that because you had written Beyond Words.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Well, I thought so, I thought so, but this was the proximity, the closeness, the mutual seeking of the pleasure of physical contact with me and a baby owl that we raised.

• 5:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I saw that moment where you first touched her, and she goes.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's unbelievable, right?

• 5:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  So I thought, well, why did we alienate ourselves from the whole rest of this living planet? And I thought, well, are we just not intelligent enough beings? Or are we taught our disconnection?

• 5:36Oprah Winfrey?

  We're taught that we have dominion over the animals, and therefore we think that.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  That's a huge part of it, but therefore we think that we're.

• 5:43Oprah Winfrey?

  We're more powerful and we're better, yes, definitely think we're better.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  There is more value to us than there is to the rest of the world. The whole rest of the world is here to serve us, to yield to us.

• 5:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Instead of we're all a part of the animal kingdom.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  We are in a huge network of relationships on a miraculous planet. So why don't we know that? So I said, well.

• 6:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Some cultures do, though.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Some cultures do.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Right, and that's what I explored through this book. What do other cultures teach about our relationship with the world? And it turns out that. All indigenous cultures teach that we're all one family. All the South Asian religions, all the Dharma religions teach that the soul goes equivalently through different lifetimes in the reincarnation process and in the process of karma, right? The eastern religions teach that the world is run by these balances of necessary opposites. What might look like opposites, they're necessary to balance.

• 6:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Balance, yes.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  And the human role is not to disturb the balances. So every other realm of human thought over thousands of years were that all life is family, the world is a set of balances. We should maintain the balances and respect, basically, the holiness of this sacred world. But the West is a total outlier. Because in the West, we came up with this idea that the whole world is here to serve us and we're better than everything. And that is the root of our disconnection. We are taught that. It's not a natural thing. It's just a different way of looking at things. And it deprives us because we've written the miracle out of our script.

• 7:27Oprah Winfrey?

  But what has Alfie taught you?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Well, really, she has taught me that all these other creatures that are out in the wild, that they really have wild lives, that she knows. Like, for instance, she knew our dogs. But if a friend came with a strange dog, that dog would freak her out. She would react like, "Oh, that's a potential predator. I'm afraid of it. I'm gonna get away." But our dogs, she'd just go and sit next to them. So she knows who she is by where she is and who she's with. And how do we know who we are? By who we're with and where we are.

• 8:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  It's the same thing.

• 8:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow, that's fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  It makes my feeling of, you know, I used to think animals are really cool. I used to think animals are really beautiful. I used to think nature was really peaceful. But more and more, I really feel like it's an absolute miracle, is what it totally is. Life is a miracle. The definition of miracle is it's something that breaks the laws of physics, you know? Like, in literature and movies, where you have a miracle, it's where something happens that really can't happen, right?

• 8:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  And energetically...

• 8:39Speaker 02

  The laws of physics, second law of thermodynamics, says everything tends toward disorder. You put a drop of ink in a bowl of water, it will spread out, the water will turn gray. It will never become a drop of ink, ever, ever, ever, right? But you take an egg that's laid, you know what an egg looks like on the inside? We've cracked enough of them open, and it makes itself a bird. That violates the laws of physics. It's a negative entropy that maintains itself in a state far from equilibrium. The entire universe is going toward equilibrium. Living things maintain themselves in a state far from equilibrium. And that's not supposed to happen, but that's what life is.

• 9:24Oprah Winfrey?

  We ask you, our podcast listeners, to send us pictures of your precious dogs, who I know are really your family members. I know. I'd like to read a passage from Carl Safina's remarkable book, Beyond Words. So, do other animals have human emotions? Yes, they do. Do humans have animal emotions? Yes, they're largely the same. Fear, aggression, well-being, anxiety, and pleasure are the emotions of shared brain structures and shared chemistries, originated in shared ancestry. They are the shared feelings of a shared world. So, this from page 34, Beyond Words.

• 10:08Oprah Winfrey?

  "Do other animals have," you say, "human emotions?" Yes, they do. They do?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  They have, well, do other animals have emotions? They have emotions. And humans have animal emotions, because humans are animals. So there's a lot of analogous things.

• 10:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  And there are a lot of things that I think are very much the same. Not all the same. Like, you know, I mean, even among people. People's emotions differ, emotionality differs. And I think that's the same among species. It differs, but they have the same kinds of emotions that we have, because they have the same nervous system that we have, the same neurotransmitters, the same hormones, exactly the same molecules. Those chemicals are the same. And so, if a dog seems happy, they're happy.

• 10:58Oprah Winfrey?

  And they do smile, don't they smile?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  And they do smile.

• 11:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, my goodness, I was running with Sadie the other day. She was smiling.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Yes, definitely.

• 11:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:05Oprah Winfrey?

  And do they have their own consciousness?

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Well, what do you mean by consciousness? The way I think of it is when we have total anesthesia, we're unconscious. Correct. That means we're not connected to our senses. So they have that kind of consciousness. They see with their eyes, they hear with their ears, they smell with their noses, they play and have fun, they're afraid of danger, they're fierce in defense of their territory or their people if they're dogs in our family. And all of that stuff is very relatable because it's basically the same thing.

• 11:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you all for joining the Oprah Podcast. We need to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to hear from a neuroscientist who trained dogs to stay still inside an MRI machine to answer this question. Do our dogs really love us?

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• 12:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I am here with Dr. Carl Safina, the author of numerous books about our relationship to dogs, other animals, and the natural world. So I know you're a fellow dog lover. Do you, do you believe or know that our dogs love us? Do they love us or are they just looking for a treat?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  That's another thing like consciousness is that we use the word so differently. We say, oh, I love my mother, I love my children, I love ice cream, I love shopping.

• 13:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Right, right. We use it for everything.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  It's the same word. But if you think of what love feels to us when we love someone, we feel that we want to be close to them, right? And so. Just for instance, in our house, our dogs are never given any kind of a treat or fed or anything like that upstairs in the bedroom. But at night, they come upstairs. Why? Because they want to be near us. When I'm in my riding cottage, our dogs frequently leave the house, come up the little path to the riding cottage. They hang out. Why? Because they want to be near me. I want to be near them too, because I love them. That's what love feels like. And yeah, that's love.

• 13:47Oprah Winfrey?

  And that's how you know it's not just looking for a treat?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. So you say that our pets show us how to be better than we are. What does that mean?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Well, I think, you know, because people are very complex and people are sometimes a little duplicitous. And people are not always honest with themselves or each other. But our dogs are, they're, what you see is what you get. They are loyal. They are forgiving. They always want to get past it and get beyond it. They always want to make up. They are very fierce when they feel that we are being threatened. And, you know, if we could just be straight shooters, loyal, always want to get past our troubles, defend what we love and defend our people in our place,

• 14:42Speaker 02

  that I think that we would be a little better for it. And the dogs in that way show us a way to do that.

• 14:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you not only, you know, I know you have dogs. You recently lost your dog Jude.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  We did lose one, yes, Jude, yes.

• 14:54Oprah Winfrey?

  And how old was Jude?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  He was 14.

• 14:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, 14 is about the age for big dogs.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:58Oprah Winfrey?

  I lost a lot of dogs at 14.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  He faded very peacefully over about a day and a half. I think we were, in a way, lucky. He went so peacefully. He just drained away. And he was just lying in his bed.

• 15:10Oprah Winfrey?

  You could feel the life force leaving.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Uh huh.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, but he didn't seem in pain or uncomfortable or even really particularly unhappy, actually.

• 15:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, because dogs are just, what I've learned about being in the present moment is that dogs are always just in the present moment.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  That's another, that's another thing that they show us, yes, right? Just like be there with all four feet in.

• 15:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and they're not worried about what they did, or did they knock over the water bowl, or what they did.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  They're certainly not worried about whether they're gonna get into graduate school, or get the promotion, or the next job, or what their sister-in-law said to them, or anything like that.

• 15:46Oprah Winfrey?

  How, did you grow up loving animals? Is that how you came to write about animals and?

• 15:52Speaker 02

  I did absolutely grow up loving animals, but the, but the funny thing is, I actually, up until 15 years ago, I would have said, I don't really like dogs. Isn't that weird?

• 16:06Oprah Winfrey?

  That is very weird.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  And the reason is, when I was, I, I like dogs that I had, I love dogs that I had, but in general, the reason is that a lot of the interactions with people and their dogs that you see, is not very pleasant, it's not very pleasant to be around, and because dogs have such complicated minds and emotional systems, they can be traumatized, they can be hurt, they can be very uncomfortable around a particular person that doesn't understand them well, or treats them badly, right? And you kind of see a lot of that in interactions.

• 16:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Because once they're treated badly, they live in fear of that person forever, yes.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, yeah, they, they can, they can live in fear, and, and they can be traumatized, you know, and when I see people, a dog is trying to sniff on a walk, and they're just yanking on the chain, or they're yelling at them, or they're holding them tight on the leash, it's just unpleasant, and, uh, somebody who, a friend of ours said, well, you know, one thing I love about you is you always let your dogs be dogs, and I never thought of it that way before, but that's become sort of like my guiding principle, is to let them be dogs.

• 17:10Oprah Winfrey?

  And how do you do that?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  I let them show us what they kind of would like to do, we provide guide rails that if they like you a lot, the guide rails just have to be very gentle, be often, I whisper my commands, because if you whisper, they have to make sure that they're hearing you, instead of yelling at them all the time. If you have a little puppy, and you want it to follow you, you walk away from it, instead of, you know, dragging it around on a leash, you take it off the leash and you walk away, and it's like, oh, wait, I'm here alone, no, I don't want to be here alone, so, I mean, it's easy, it's actually easy, because they're...

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Evolved social behavior is more like people than probably any other animal.

• 17:52Oprah Winfrey?

  So you said up until about 15 years ago. So 15 years ago, what happened?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  So 15 years ago, what happened was, uh, so this is a slightly complicated story, okay?

• 18:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  So I thought, well, one thing about dogs is they're kind of designed animals. And I'm really interested in nature and I'm really interested in evolution, in what life really is and how it really works, right?

• 18:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  And dogs are sort of designed. Like, you want a little lapdog, you make one. You want a hunting dog, you make one. You want a guard dog, you make one. All these different breeds. You want something that's gonna go swim in the water and retrieve things, you make one. So I thought, you can't really learn much about nature and real life, what it really is, from dogs. Then two things happened.

• 18:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Because our culture has domesticized dogs.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Domesticized and just made them what we want them to be. Like, we make everything, like, we make chairs the way we want chairs and cars the way we want cars. I figure we made these animals the way we want them.

• 18:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  So then what happened was kind of, um, odd. First of all, we, we had, um, we had a baby raccoon whose mother had gotten hit by a car. They had a den in a tree in our yard. This emaciated baby raccoon fell out of the tree. And we were raising this baby raccoon. And they're very, very playful. They're bad pets. I don't recommend it. You need to know a lot about animal behavior to be safe around raccoons. So I don't recommend it, but they're fantastic animals. And as soon as this little thing got healthy and got to the point where it was very playful, it started to do the exact same play bow that dogs do.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Front paws down, rear end up in the air, inviting you to play. And I thought, whoa, that's not even a canid. That's the same behavior dogs do. That means that these dogs have a lot of really ancient stuff still in them. Oh, I better pay a lot more attention to dogs. The same.

• 19:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, really? So that position is a... What do you call that position? When the paws are in front?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  The play bow.

• 19:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  The play... What I... It's so ancient that it predates even the canid lineage. Okay? In the canid lineage, so there are carnivores. Raccoons are one, among many. And then there are canids, like foxes and coyotes and wolves. And then there are dogs. Dogs' only ancestors are wolves. Right?

• 20:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Okay. So this play bow predates all of that. It's this ancient thing. And I realize, whoa, these dogs... There's a lot of really genuine, authentic stuff still in there. I better pay a lot more attention.

• 20:30Oprah Winfrey?

  To the dogs.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Than I have been.

• 20:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Because I pay a lot of attention to wild animals.

• 20:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  But I was paying... I suddenly...

• 20:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:37Oprah Winfrey?

  You thought they were too domesticated for you to pay any attention to.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Right. So then, I went to Yellowstone, because I was gonna write about wolves. And I see wolves. And what I realize is that wolves live in nuclear families. What we call a pack. It's mom and dad wolf. And they're young ones of maybe the last two or three years. After that, when they get to be adolescents, late adolescents, young adults, they leave to go find their footing in the world. Just like our children are supposed to do, right? Like we did. So...

• 21:09Speaker 02

  The young wolves look to the mom and dad wolves. What are we doing next? What are we doing now? Are we sleeping for the next six hours? Are we gonna go hunting? Are we gonna move over the ridge to the next valley? Mom and dad, tell us what we're gonna do now. The young wolves are always looking to their parents. And they play. They wag their tails. They do with each other so many things that dogs do in our homes and in our families. And so what I realize is that what dogs are, really, they're wolves in arrested development. They never quite become full adults to the stage where they say, "I have to leave. I have to go find my own place in the world."

• 21:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, because they're dependent upon us for food.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  So they stay dependent on us.

• 21:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Whereas, if you raise other wild animals, really wild animals, like that raccoon, for instance...

• 22:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Or if you took in a wild wolf.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Or if you took in a wild wolf, or if you raise wild cats... They get to adolescence. Before adolescence, they're playful, they're friendly, they never hurt you. At adolescence, they get a little cranky and they leave because they are geared to go find their own life. And the dogs never do that. They are wolves in arrested development. That's my conclusion from watching all this stuff and thinking about it a lot for a lot of years.

• 22:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, once you decided that they were wolves in arrested development, is that when you decided to get your own?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Oh, no. I had had a couple of dogs that I loved. And then, right around that time, a dog that we had had for a while passed away. And we wound up getting, make a long story short, we wound up getting three dogs. I was like, okay, we can get another dog. And Patricia, my wife, said, okay, well, you can just say you can get another dog. I want two dogs. Okay, so we got two dogs. And then my very beloved former editor had a little puppy, a miniature Australian shepherd, that had the energy of a nuclear reactor.

• 23:09Oprah Winfrey?

  I was gonna say, Australian shepherd.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  And they lived in a penthouse in Manhattan, and the dog was going literally out of her mind. So, one of the visits there, my editor's wife said to me, Carl, do you want our dog? This dog is not doing well here with us. And at first, I said, well, I don't know, I have to ask Patricia. So, I called her on the train, so I was going home. She said, why don't you just bring the dog? So now we have that dog. That's Katie. She's fantastic.

• 23:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I want to bring in Dr. Gregory Burns. He's a neuroscientist who spent a decade studying the brains of dogs using groundbreaking MRI research. Welcome, Dr. Burns. Hello.

• 23:46Speaker 06

  Hey, great to be here.

• 23:49Oprah Winfrey?

  You wrote a New York Times bestseller called How Dogs Love Us. Tell us how you were able to prove that our dogs love us.

• 23:56Speaker 06

  Well, I'm a neuroscientist, and so I view behavior and everything through the lens of the brain. And so about 11 years ago, I started a project where we trained dogs to go in MRI scanners, awake, unrestrained, and just, you know, just a thing that they did.

• 24:16Oprah Winfrey?

  I read that. So can I stop you? Because everybody's thinking the same thing I was thinking when I first read it. How do you get a dog to be in an MRI machine?

• 24:26Speaker 06

  It was originally a project I didn't know if it could be done. In fact, everyone I told thought this was a ridiculous idea.

• 24:35Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 06

  But I teamed up with a very good dog trainer and we basically broke down the whole process of going into an MRI for a dog's perspective. And I built a simulator that I kept in my basement, a big tube. And just over the course of many months, I slowly acclimated my dog, Callie, to going in this tube. And then I taught her how to put her head in like in a little chin rest. And we made little earplugs because of course they're very loud. And I started playing recordings of the sound an MRI makes just in the background when we're playing and having fun. And just put all these steps together just very slowly and very gradually.

• 25:20Speaker 06

  And essence just made a game out of it for her because she doesn't know what an MRI is.

• 25:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Right. So what did you find out through this process?

• 25:29Speaker 06

  So of course, everyone wants to know if their dog loves them. That was what I wanted to know as well. Is it just the treats? Is it some kind of bond that they have beyond that?

• 25:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Or is it dependency? Is it like you know you can't get along without me, so you have to be nice to me?

• 25:48Speaker 06

  It could be. Yeah, it could be any of those things because they can't speak to us and tell us what they're thinking. So my idea was just, well, let's go look in their brains because we know essentially what their brain looks like. They have many of the same basic structures that we do. And so we focused on the reward parts of their brain and asked a very simple question. When we show a dog a treat or the prospect of a treat, we're going to see activity there. That's what Pavlov discovered 100 years ago. But then the question is, well, what about when there's no treat? What about when just person is there, when their owner is there and they just say, "Good girl" or "good boy"? What does that do?

• 26:31Speaker 06

  And what we found was for the majority of dogs, about three quarters of the dogs, it was equal response to both of those things. The dogs valued that praise and just being around their person as much as food. And for about a quarter of them, they actually valued it more, the praise.

• 26:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. And so what has doing all this work taught you about the significance of our dogs and our lives?

• 26:58Speaker 06

  Well, I agree with Dr. Safina that they evolved to be with us. They are our first friends. They are the first animals who, in essence, chose to be with us. And so they are very well-suited to our lifestyles. They are probably the most successful animal on this planet besides humans. Because there's roughly one dog for every 10 people on this planet. That's a lot of dogs. And that speaks to their success in kind of hitching their wagons to us.

• 27:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, what did you want to say, Doc?

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Another huge, interesting thing about that is that everywhere people have ever gone, dogs have been there with them. So we seem to have valued their presence in our lives as much as they value our presence in theirs. They seem to be these companions that we don't want to go across the ocean in outrigger canoes without dogs. We don't want to travel to Australia 60,000 years ago without dogs. I mean, it's really unbelievable. The Arctic, dogs are everywhere people have gone.

• 28:07Oprah Winfrey?

  That's fascinating. And are dogs capable of other complex human emotions? Have you discovered like jealousy, or empathy, or guilt?

• 28:18Speaker 06

  So we have done many experiments in those realms. And probably, I think the one that kind of stands out the most is we have actually studied jealousy. So we did an experiment with the dogs that were trained for MRI. And we had their humans standing there right in front of them. And so we did a test where the human sometimes gave their dog a treat. And then other times, they turned around and put the food in a bucket behind them. And then the third condition was they gave the treat to a very realistic-looking statue of a dog.

• 28:55Speaker 06

  So we assume that our subjects were not terribly happy when they didn't get their treat. But what was interesting is what's the difference between when that treat goes to a bucket versus another dog or something that looks like a dog? So we thought that that might evoke some jealousy. And what was interesting is that for some of the dogs, it actually evoked a response in an area of the brain called the amygdala, which is associated with arousal. It's like getting the hackles up. And they were clearly bothered by it, even though to outward appearances, they were doing what they were taught, they stayed in the scanner, they were just watching. But we could see something in the brain that that did bother them.

• 29:38Speaker 06

  But I think the important thing here is not all the dogs were like that, only some of them. And when we looked at it more closely, these were the dogs who had histories of aggressive behavior. They would fight with other dogs, especially over resources. My dog being one of them. Callie, even though she was the first one to do this, I'd say she was the first, but not the best.

• 30:02Oprah Winfrey?

  And now, your latest book is called Cow Puppy. I love that title, Cow Puppy, about your herd of 10 miniature cows. Somebody wanted us to know about cows. Are they in any way like dogs?

• 30:13Speaker 06

  They're a lot like dogs. So four years ago, I left the city and my wife and I moved to a farm to live the green acres life and found myself trying to manage pastures and acquired a bull and two cows who very quickly gave birth. And that three turned into five, which then turned into 10. And I fell in love with them. I found that they are as demonstrative as dogs that I have. If you know how to interpret their language, they're extremely social. And following on what Dr.

• 30:47Oprah Winfrey?

  The cows are or the calves are? Because I have a bunch of cows and I don't think of cows as being very similar to dogs. I asked that question, but I don't think of them as being very similar at all.

• 30:57Speaker 06

  I have seen very similar behaviors that my cows have, like the dogs. So they have play bows too, especially the calves. They will kind of go down and put their front legs down and put their butt up in the air when they want to play. And they even wag their tails. And they're extremely affectionate with each other. And once they accept you into the herd... They treat you the same way. They lick me, they, you know, they'll lie down and just cuddle up to me. And there's no treats involved because all I do is manage the pastures.

• 31:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. And I, I think if you, if you give almost anything a chance to show you how relational they are capable of being, you will be astonished, as I have been astonished, at the world that we are surrounded by with all these things that we think are just scenery. Oh, a bird flitting by, a rabbit in the bushes, that these, these creatures actually have lives. They have their own relationships. They're capable of showing you that, but we are almost never in a situation where we can see it

• 32:13Speaker 02

  or we're even open to seeing it. And the, the big exception is our dogs or maybe our cats in our, in our homes. And most people don't get contact with any of these other lives.

• 32:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  And, and any of their, their minds, their emotional systems, which have a lot more in common than they differ.

• 32:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you, Dr. Burns. So fascinating. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thanks to all of my fellow dog lovers. Thank y'all for listening to this special episode of the Oprah Podcast. When we come back, we're going to meet families whose dogs literally saved their owners' lives.

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• 33:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I am grateful to you for taking time out of your busy day to be here. You may think your dog is only interested in treats and an app. You're about to hear two stories of dogs coming to the rescue just in the nick of time. Really incredible.

• 33:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Do you ever look into your dog's eyes and wonder, "What's going on in there?" That's exactly what my guest Carl Safina is inviting us to do, to open our minds to the phenomenal capabilities and capacities of the animal mind. We heard from one of our listeners, Gabby, a mother of two in Pennsylvania. She was a part of a group that rescued 35 dogs left homeless after Hurricane Helene struck the East Coast in 2024. Gabby adopted one of those dogs, a shy boy named Rusty, who, less than two weeks after joining the family, showed Gabby what Carl sees as a dog's true nature: watchful, fiercely protective, intuitive.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Hi. Yes, first of all, I am so nervous and all-stuck. Thank you for having me.

• 34:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, nice.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  I grew up watching you with my mom in the afternoons. So, you know, fast forward 11-ish days later, Rusty's come home, he's starting to acclimate. We definitely were mindful of giving him that space. And Rusty was in the room with us. And I just, I don't know how long I had been asleep, but I just remember waking up because he was barking. And this dog had not made a noise the whole time we had had him so far. And Wesley at the time was six months old and Michael was 21 months old. And so I got up and I was like, "You know what, Rusty, like, stop." But then he started gnawing at my sleeve on my sweatshirt that I was wearing. So I opened my drawer.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  I still get chills kind of thinking about it. But my house was filled with black smoke. And, you know, at the time, I just, I didn't know what was going to happen. I just remember kind of like going into the things that I did know. Because my husband is a firefighter and has been a volunteer firefighter for 20-plus years. So I knew I needed to stay low. I knew I needed to grab my boys and also get the dogs out. So Rusty and my other dog, Aria, that was in the bedroom, came down the steps with me. I couldn't see anything, um, because it was just such a thick layer of smoke in the house. But I got them outside. I got with the boys. I put them safely in their car seats in my car that happened to be parked up front. But then I realized that my other

• 36:00Speaker 03

  dogs were still inside. And so I know that they, I know what they say, and my husband scolded me for it, I promise, but um, to not go back in. But I went back in because I was not gonna leave my dogs behind, um, because they're my family. And so I went back in, you know, the thick of the smoke, my dalmatian, who you would think would be the most equipped to handle a situation like this, um, proceeded to roll over and fall back to sleep as I'm trying to drag her out of the house. In that process, I located the fire. There was a fire extinguisher in our kitchen, and I was able to put it out very quickly. And evidently, what had happened was an electrical outlet burst, and that

• 36:41Speaker 03

  spark caught a cereal box, which then caught on fire, which then fell into a pot, or at least that's what we've surmised from, um, you know, the investigations afterwards. Um, my husband also-

• 36:52Oprah Winfrey?

  And where were your smoke detectors? What happened with the smoke detectors?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  That's a good question, right? So we, you know, test our smoke detectors, daylight savings, twice a year. We do all of those things, um, you know, for very fire prevention-minded, um, just naturally. And they failed. They didn't go off.

• 37:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. Yikes. But Rusty had sensed the smoke in the house and that there was something going on and was, was trying to get you out, yes?

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Yes. And I mean, we were new to him. He was new to us. But the fact that he was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that we got out of that house, I mean, and it means absolutely everything to us. And, you know, quite frankly, if Rusty hadn't have been there, because evidently my other dogs could have cared less, I'm not sure where we would be right now, which is hard to think about, because the six-month-old baby and a 21-month-old, I mean, my own life put aside. Like, I just- I can't imagine what that would have looked like, so we're very grateful to him.

• 37:51Oprah Winfrey?

  It's interesting that you say cared less. I don't know if it's cared less or that that dog had a sensitivity that the other dogs did not. What do you say?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Well, apparently, that's the case. But I think, you know, Rusty was probably wondering, I'm alerting you to something really serious and dangerous. You won't believe me. A lot of times when dogs are trying to alert people, we don't give them the credit of saying, oh, what's wrong? Let me get up and check it out, right? We try to dismiss it because we don't give them the credit that they deserve, even though we love them, they're part of our family, but but our expectations of them don't really match their capabilities.

• 38:26Oprah Winfrey?

  That's right, because you're so readily willing to dismiss them when they're obviously trying to show you something or speak to you in a way that communicates danger or communicates alarm. Yes. Gabby, thank you so much for sharing that story. Thank you so much. And Rusty, we couldn't see you, but thank you, Rusty. Amanda and her son Gabriel are joining us on Zoom. Amanda, tell us what happened with your dog Axel.

• 38:53Speaker 09

  Yes, so thank you for having us. It's an honor to be here. And so my son Gabriel, he had a stroke at 17 and going into his senior year of high school. And on Saturday morning, Axel, our dog, woke me up at around 5:00 in the morning. And he wasn't very gentle about it. You know, he went on top of the bed in our room, both paws on my chest, really intense on waking me up. I figured, you know, the dog wanted to be let out. So my husband went downstairs. My son's room was downstairs, and my husband walked to the back to open

• 39:37Speaker 09

  the sliding door and let Axel out. And he didn't follow. He stopped in front of my son's door. Little did we know, my son was already actively having a stroke, had fallen before that, we were upstairs sleeping. I don't know if Axel saw it, if he was present or not, but he knew to somehow, he knew to go upstairs, wake us up, bring us downstairs to encounter Gabriel and stopped in front of Gabriel's room. And Gabriel came out, he was swearing. He was already actively in this stroke. And being a teenage boy, we would never have gone into his room until possibly noon, 1:00 PM. I mean, he-

• 40:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Cause teenagers sleep, yes.

• 40:18Speaker 09

  Exactly, and so, you know, it was- Later, we found out from doctors how significant and important it was that Axel chewed us to go see Gabriel because had it been five hours before we got him to the hospital, he could have been paralyzed forever or worse.

• 40:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Gabriel, what do you want to say?

• 40:42Speaker 10

  I don't know where I would have been if it wasn't like as fast as it was. But like hearing that if it wasn't as fast as it was, that I would have not even recovered as well as I have is just, it was terrifying.

• 41:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and I was wondering, how do you not give Axel every treat? That, how do you not succumb to everything? Cause like Axel, you saved my life, so you can have anything you want now from now on, yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 10

  Well, he's actually right here, nice to me. He's kind of laying down, I don't know.

• 41:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 41:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 41:24Oprah Winfrey?

  That's a beautiful dog, beautiful dog. What kind of dog?

• 41:28Speaker 10

  He's a border collie, collie mix, so.

• 41:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Border collies are so smart anyway.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  They are so smart, but look at the love in, just right there.

• 41:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, look at that. What do you make, what do you make of this, Carl?

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Well, look, I mean, here are, here is just these two, we think of them as different species, right? People and dogs, and yet the pleasure of that touch is so mutual.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  And dogs understand when things are normal and when things are out of the ordinary, and they understand distress. They show that all the time.

• 42:03Oprah Winfrey?

  So that makes sense to you that Axel would have sensed something was off with Gabriel and would have awakened them?

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the strange thing is, I mean, was your door closed?

• 42:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Was your door closed in the room? The door was closed. Okay.

• 42:15Speaker 10

  Yeah, I went to my room and I closed the door and just go to sleep because that's just normal. And that's whenever my dad came down with Axel and that's whenever Axel just, like, he stopped at my door and he just wouldn't leave.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Oprah, so there's another thing in there that is a thing called object permanence. And psychologists forever said only humans have object permanence, the idea that when you don't see something, it still exists. Well, obviously, these dogs know who they are. They know who we are. They know where they are. They understand their lives. They understand who is in their lives. We are in their lives. So this dog saw their person in trouble, have a fall. He goes, he closes the door. The dog still knows he's in there in trouble and goes to get help.

• 43:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. We've heard this a lot, though. Are dogs able to sense strokes more so than, I don't know?

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Well, there are some illness, you know, there are dogs that are trained to alert about seizures and things like that. And apparently, there are even chemical cues that the body gives off that dogs can smell about oncoming seizures. It's different than this, right?

• 43:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  But other kinds of cues because they're like superheroes. Their smell is way better than ours. Their hearing is way better than ours. So in a way, their world is a lot more vivid to them than our world is to us.

• 43:45Oprah Winfrey?

  World is vivid. Thanks, Gabriel. Thanks, Amanda. Thank you. And good dog, Axel.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, good dog.

• 43:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Good dog. Thanks for sharing that. Thank you. We have one more person joining us on Zoom. Joining us from Maryland, Christina, who started an online community called Black Women Love Dogs with over 35,000 followers on Instagram. Tell us the story behind that.

• 44:05Speaker 11

  Yes. Hello, Oprah. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about my community. Like you said, I'm originally from Maryland. I grew up here with a single mother. And I would ask my mom for a dog consistently. I didn't realize, of course, the reason that she kept saying no was because she just couldn't afford it. She had to take care of me. So after I graduated from my HBCU, I said, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and do my lifelong dream of having a dog and being a dog mom. And so I actually adopted my dog, my first baby, Kana. And after I adopted her, I started looking for a community.

• 44:47Speaker 11

  I wanted to be able to speak to people about everything dealing with dog ownership. I noticed that a lot of the communities, there weren't a lot of people that looked like me. I was like, you know what? I just wanna see if I can build my own community. My mom always taught me, if there isn't something there for you, create it. Why don't you do it? And it just so happened to grow into such a beautiful community. Now we do so many different in-person events where we're able to meet up with so many different black dog moms. We're able to do giveaways. Uh, last year, we just awarded our first scholarship to a future black veterinarian.

• 45:24Oprah Winfrey?

  What do you wanna say about your special bond with your dog? Well, how has it changed you?

• 45:29Speaker 11

  For sure. So recently, I actually just moved to Houston, Texas. And me and my dog are the only ones there. I don't have any family or friends. And it can be really isolating, uh, to be alone. And so one of the things that happened when I was in a position where I was just in a somber mood one day, she just came to me and she literally just rested her, uh, paw on my shoulder. And I just, we just looked at each other and I just started bawling with tears because I just felt like she just knew in that moment, what I needed was her comfort and her support. Um, she's always there to make sure that I feel at peace. I always tell people that no matter what, if Kana's there, I'm good.

• 46:15Speaker 11

  I'm gonna be at peace. I can do anything.

• 46:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Hmm. I love that handle, too. Black women love dogs. Thank you so much, Christina. Good luck with it.

• 46:25Speaker 11

  Thank you so much.

• 46:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Good luck. Good luck with it. Thank you all for listening. We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Carl Safina. I found it so fascinating. Hope you do, too.

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• 46:54Speaker 13

  They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them.

• 46:57Speaker 12

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• 47:00Oprah Winfrey?

  This should be tons of fun.

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• 47:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. If you're enjoying this conversation as much as I am, I would encourage you to pick up any one of Carl Safina's beautifully-written books on our relationship to animals and the natural world. Now, back to our conversation. So this is what I wanted to know. How did you get interested? And we started the conversation about, as a young boy, you were interested in nature, you were paying attention, you saw... There was a deep awareness for you.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And actually, that started really with animals that were not wild animals. My father bred canaries as a hobby.

• 47:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  And as a seven-year-old, I demanded that I had to have my own flock of homing pigeons. And so my father very generously complied with my request. And I had my own flock of homing pigeons from the time I was seven, eight, nine, 10. When you're a little boy like that, you have plenty of time to be with these kinds of creatures. I would... I'd go in the coop. I'd watch their lives. I'd watch them in the stack of fruit boxes that we had where they would build their nests. And I'd watch them decide who they were gonna marry. And sometimes they had squabbles and jealousy. We'd let them out every day.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  They'd fly around, they'd come back, feed their babies, and go to sleep. Across the yard, we lived in our own stack of boxes in our apartment building, where people figured out who they were gonna marry. They sometimes had their squabbles. The adults left during the day. They came home, fed their babies, and went to sleep. And I realized, right from the start, before I was taught, "Oh, no." I realized that their lives are really, in broad strokes, were all the same. We're all one life.

• 48:55Oprah Winfrey?

  You were able to connect that?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:57Oprah Winfrey?

  At a young age?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  That's the natural thing to see. And that's really why all Indigenous people, despite the tremendous cultural differences, their sense of our relationship among other living things is that we are all family.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  That idea only got into Western culture with Charles Darwin. And, you know, and a lot of people still don't accept that, right?

• 49:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  That we are all family.

• 49:26Oprah Winfrey?

  That is powerful. That is powerful. Don't you say that, I can't remember the number, of how, the percentage of birds left on the planet are all chickens now?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Something like 80% of all the birds in the world are chickens. And a few ducks, and a few turkeys that we raise.

• 49:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  And we raise them to pen them and kill them.

• 49:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Right? That's, and that's our, that's our main relationship.

• 49:56Oprah Winfrey?

  And the percentage of cows and pigs are the, are the mammals.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Of mammals, humans, cows and pigs are 96% of all the mammals on Earth now. And that, of course, is a radical difference from what it was, you know, 500 years ago, let's say.

• 50:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Because we feel like we are more powerful than they are. And there's no sense for the fact that we're all a part of one...

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Right. And just the respect that, you know, it like, it shows, this hubris that we have shows in the fact that the world is being unbalanced by us. We have this extreme weather. We have the climate disruption. We have the deforestation. We have the decline. Since I was 15 years old in high school, the average population of wild animals...

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Has declined 70%, 7-0% Since I was in high school. If we're so powerful and we're so smart, why aren't we taking care of the miracle of the world that made us and maintains us?

• 51:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Because we don't get it.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  I'm afraid we don't.

• 51:07Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm afraid we don't. Could you speak to, because you were talking about, I think, the Australian shepherd that you took into your home, the Australian shepherd that was losing its mind in the apartment?

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:16Oprah Winfrey?

  And often I see people,

• 51:19Oprah Winfrey?

  I know I'm going to get complaints about it, but in New York City with these huge dogs.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:24Oprah Winfrey?

  In little apartments. And I feel for that dog.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  That's why I was saying that I didn't really like dogs because being around them was often so uncomfortable because the dog and the situation were so badly matched. And that was the case with little Katie.

• 51:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Shouldn't people consider that, though, when they're getting a dog?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 51:42Oprah Winfrey?

  You should consider what's good for you, but also what's going to be good for the dog.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Right, right. What is this breed's energy level?

• 51:49Oprah Winfrey?

  An Australian shepherd wants to herd. They have no business being up in an apartment.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Right, exactly, exactly. But she came with us. It took a few months for her to adjust. I remember the first time, we brought her to the beach with our other two dogs. We immediately just, they're always loose at the beach, always off leash. And she's looking around. She was with us like two days at that point. So we start walking down the beach and she's like, "Oh, that's my family down there. Okay, I better keep up with them." And there were other people, other dogs. She knew right away that we, it was mainly us she was supposed to key into, right? And then, this was really, really interesting, she ran way, way down the beach, ran after something. And I said, "Okay, let's just turn around."

• 52:39Speaker 02

  And see what happens and show her that, you know, we, when we go this way, you need to know, right? So we go and always our other two dogs, they immediately turn around with us because that's the routine. Well, Jude, he would have none of this and none of leaving that new puppy out there. He laid down with his butt to us and he just waited and watched for her. And when she caught up to where he was lying down, he got up and he, he turned around. Yeah.

• 53:08Oprah Winfrey?

  And that happened almost immediately after?

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, almost, almost immediately.

• 53:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow, wow, wow, wow. So what can you finally tell us? What is beyond words? What is the energy that is beyond words when it comes to animals and the way they think and feel?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  People have explicitly said that humans can only think because we have language.

• 53:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  And this is simply not the case. There is so much that is beyond words. There is so much understanding. There is so much bonding. There is so much emotion. There is so much understanding of who we are and where we are and who we are because of who we're with. That does not have words to it. We have kind of lost track of that. You know, when you go to your house, you don't say, oh, this is my house. Oh, that is my refrigerator. Oh, that is my spouse. The, the recognition is instant and that's, that's our animal recognition of who we are. And that's what the world is filled with. It's filled with this kind of recognition and understanding.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  And we just don't know.

• 54:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. Thank you.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Oprah, thank you so much. This has been a thrill.

• 54:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, so delighted that you could come all this way.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Very well worth it.

• 54:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Carl's nonprofit is called the Safina Center, and their mission is to advance the case for all life on Earth by bringing together scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. You can learn more at safinasinner.org. I thank you, Dr. Gregory Burns. Dr. Burns' book is How Dogs Love Us and Cow Puppy. And Carl's books, including Beyond Words, which I love so much, and Alfie and Me, are all available now wherever you get your books. Thank you, Amanda, and thank you, Gabriel, Gabby, and Christina for Zooming with us. And a special thank you to all the dogs. All the dogs. Thank you all for listening and watching. See you next week.

• 55:14Oprah Winfrey?

  You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.

• 55:31Speaker 14

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