Love, a human feeling
Speaking of love to explain the behavior of a dog who feels affection for one of his congeners, a cat, a rabbit or any other animal or even a human is anthromorphism. It is about attributing human reactions and feelings to an animal.
Certainly, the dog is a very sensitive and intelligent being capable of feeling emotions and feelings, but to talk about love as we can conceive it between two human people is to predict what we will ignore!
Without being mistaken, more than love, we can speak more of attachment to describe the affection that unites the animal to a person or another animal.Attachment is still a very strong bond that unites two beings to each other and remains essential to their mutual well-being.
In dogs, this attachment is manifested concretely by the joy of finding the person or animal he loves, by licking, by requests for caresses, by seeking the company of his being of attachment, by promiscuity between two animals (they can sleep together, for example) etc.
Is it love that guides the choice of a sexual partner in dogs?
It seems not because dogs' sexual behaviors are activated by a set of neurohormonal processes that make mating instinctive / "automatic" in the event of an encounter between two sexually receptive dogs during the bitch's heat period .
Indeed, the female, during her heat, emits sex pheromones under the action of hormonal changes linked to her ovarian cycle which in turn induce hormonal changes in whole males that capture them.These pheromones trigger sexual arousal, a biological need to seek out a female to mate with.
Furthermore, male dogs tend to mate with several females and females with several males. On the other hand, a female dog, although she is indeed in heat, can completely refuse to mate with the first male that comes along. Does she then refuse to mate with a dog she has not "fallen in love" with? It's unlikely. The refusal of mating by the female is generally explained by pain in her back or her hind legs, a bad past experience with a male, a strong character or simply apprehension of this male dog. Moreover, a male dog socialized with several species and with the human being, can develop a sexual impregnation with these various species. This impregnation is probably linked to related odors and/or sex pheromones between all these species.Thus, it can happen that a dog is sexually excited by a woman (or rather by the odorous molecules she emits), at the time of her ovulation and/or her period. This is only a biological response and does not mean that the dog has "fallen in love" with a woman.
When a dog is too attached
Feeling affection for someone or another animal is good except when there is a real emotional dependence of the dog towards this being of attachment. In the absence of this person or animal, the emotionally dependent dog can begin to feel depressed (he no longer eats, no longer plays, sleeps all the time) and/or feels anxiety. We then speak of hyperattachment and separation anxiety.
So just because a dog follows you around the house or asks you for cuddles all the time doesn't mean that he's "in love with you" or that he lets himself wither away. the absence of the second dog from the house that he "is depressed because his lover/is not there" .No ! These are not simple expressions of love but potentially a real behavioral problem that undermines the well-being of your animal. This must then be remedied by setting up a detachment therapy, carried out with the help of a behavioral veterinarian or a professional canine behavioral trainer.