Those signs of stress include turning the ears down, looking away to avoid eye contact and partly closing their eyes.
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Dogs are technically cursorial animals, which is a term that indicates that they are designed for swift running.
While studies have shown that young children need lots of human contact growing up, Coren says the same can’t be said for dogs and puppies. So when they feel threatened or trapped, they will try and run away.
He found that around 82 per cent of the photographs showed “unhappy dogs” receiving hugs from their owners or children.
Based on this method, Coren determined 81.6 percent of the photos he examined featured dogs that were uncomfortable.
Professor Coren said when the dog’s ears are lowered or slicked against the side of their head is another sign of anxiety. According to a recent research, it has been found out that dogs do not like being hugged as this gesture of love makes them anxious and stressed. “That implies that in times of stress or threat the first line of defense that a dog uses is not his teeth, but rather his ability to run away”, Coren wrote.
In order to reach the findings, the researchers randomly selected around 250 photographs of dogs from Google and Flickr where people were hugging the canines.
Professor Coren said 10.8% of the dogs were neutral or showed ambiguous responses.
But, this doesn’t mean you can’t love your pup.
Coren says that there are various signals to watch our for if a dog is stressed.
MORE: Do dogs or cats love their owners more?
In an article in Psychology Today, Dr Coren wrote that “the results indicated that the internet contains many pictures of happy people hugging what appear to be unhappy dogs”.
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Coren suggests expressing your affection toward your pet “with a pat, a kind word, and maybe a treat”.
