Why Dogs are better!

My dog mail is usually flooded with messages from my furry friends. Yesterday while I was checking my inbox, amidst the milieu of emails with subjects like “Crash course on how to threaten a cat”, “What annoys a cat the most” etcetera, there was a mail from Gucci (the one who keeps Runa as his roomy) It read about why dogs are better than Women.

Patience, my male chauvinist friends; since dogs don’t have a biased gene, the second part of the mail obviously explores the issue as to how dogs are better than Men.

That was 2010, and the list below was already old when it landed in my inbox. What none of us had back then was evidence. A team in Budapest has since gone and collected some, and the answer sits at the bottom of this page.

Part 1: How dogs are better than women

• Dogs love it when your friends come over.
• Dogs don’t care if you use their shampoo.
• Dogs think you sing great.
• A dog’s time in the bathroom is confined to a quick drink.
• Dogs don’t expect you to call when you are running late.
• The late you are, more excited dogs are to see you.
• Dogs will forgive you for playing with other dogs.
• Dogs don’t notice if you call them by another dog’s name.
• Dogs understand that farts are funny.
• If a dog is gorgeous, other dogs don’t hate it.
• Dogs don’t shop.
• Dogs like it when you leave lots of things on the floor.
• Dogs never need to examine the relationship.
• A dog’s parents never visit.
• Dogs love long car trips.
• Dogs understand that instincts are better than asking for directions.
• Dogs understand that all animals smaller than dogs were made to be hunted.
• Dogs never criticize.
• Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to get your point across.

Hang on ladies, now comes your favourite part 😉

Part 2: How dogs are better than men

• Dogs don’t come in drunk and expect loving.
• Dogs don’t notice when you’ve had a bad hair day.
• Dogs understand when you cry.
• Dogs don’t ogle the girls at the beach.
• Dogs like to cuddle as long as you do.
• Dogs don’t bring old army buddies home on the spur of the moment.
• Dogs never promise “not to do it again”–whatever IT is.
• Dogs love you more than they love anybody else.
• Dogs like YOUR friends too.
• Dogs never act ashamed to be seen with you in public.
• Dogs don’t spend Sunday afternoon’s watching football/cricket–unless you do.
• Dogs never get bored with you and look for someone younger and more exciting.
• Dogs don’t bury themselves in a newspaper at breakfast.
• Dogs don’t criticize the way you keep the house.
• Dogs love you unconditionally.
• Dogs never correct your grammar.
• Dogs don’t care how long you talk on the telephone.
• You never have to wonder if your dog really loves you.
• Dogs don’t demand to control the TV remote.
• You’re always Number One with your dog.

Now, with the power vested in me by the Canine central, I hereby read my dictum, from Part 1 and 2 we have come to the conclusion that

Dogs > women… (A)

& dogs are better than men… (B)

From equations A and B, we have

Dogs> men + women

Dogs > human beings

Q.E.D.

Who said dogs don’t know mathematics?

PS Read it somewhere, Men are like dogs. They keep coming back… Women are like cats. Yell at a cat once, they’re gone.

So are dogs actually better than humans?

Owners rate their dog higher than any human in their life except their own child. That comes from a 2025 study of 717 owners published in Scientific Reports, which scored five relationships on 13 identical measures. Dogs finished second to children on satisfaction and support, and second to best friends on the absence of conflict. On everything else, the dog won.

The explanation is the uncomfortable part, and the chain mail never goes near it. The dog scores that well partly because it is not a relationship between equals. You decide when he eats, where he sleeps, who he meets, when he goes out and when he comes back in. Take away a person’s ability to disagree with you and watch most of your conflicts disappear as well. What the researchers found left over reads like a parent-child bond spliced to a best friendship: the warmth of the first, the low friction of the second.

The body backs it up. Karen Allen, Jim Blascovich and Wendy Mendes put 240 married couples through mental arithmetic and a hand submerged in ice water, in front of nobody, a friend, a spouse, or a pet. Blood pressure and heart rate climbed least when the pet was in the room. They climbed most in front of the spouse. The paper is titled The Truth About Cats and Dogs, so the authors clearly knew what they had.

Why “better” is the wrong word

A dog is not a better human. A dog is an easier one to live with, and easy and better are not the same thing. Your friend argues with you because she is a person with her own opinion about Tuesday. Your dog does not argue because your dog does not get a vote.

That distinction lands harder here than it does in Budapest. A relationship where one side holds all the power is only ever as good as the person holding it. The same uncomplaining loyalty this list spends 39 lines celebrating is exactly what makes a dog easy to abandon the week he stops being convenient. He will not argue and he will not leave. He will sit outside the gate and wait.

There are more than 1,100 adoption listings on this site. Some are indies picked up off the street, some are litters nobody planned, and some are dogs who were somebody’s easy relationship right up until the day they weren’t. If the punchline above is going to mean anything, go and adopt one of them. If you came only for the sentiment, the dog quotes are over here.