Sorry, cats – dogs are still more popular than you, at least among Americans. As of 2024, 65.1 million households own a dog and 46.5 million prefer cats. So, apologies to all the contrarians, but we have to go with the trends of the real world here and get in some doggo content.
Today, we’re featuring the dog memes from the project I’d Rather Be With My Dog. It’s an Instagram page with over 500k followers. But that’s not all: it’s also a brand that’s all about rescuing pups and giving them a loving forever home. So sit back and enjoy some memes for dog lovers from other true dog lovers!
To know more about dogs and what their silly behavior captured in memes can be, Bored Panda reached out to Clinical Animal Behaviorist Karen Wild. She’s a registered dog trainer and author of five books on dog and cat behavior, including Being A Dog. Read on to find her thoughts on whether there is any behavioral basis on why dogs act as silly as they do in these memes or is it just us imagining things.
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The I’d Rather Be With Your Dog Instagram is not just a meme page for dog lovers. It’s also a lifestyle brand created by CEO Doug Ratner. He credits its creation to his pooch, Oggy. “I was sitting at the computer with my guitar in my lap,” Ratner writes on the I’d Rather Be With My Dog website.
“I was fixated on a particular riff that I couldn’t put any words to and needless to say I was frustrated. But lo and behold, sitting right next to me was my faithful Oggy, just staring at me with his big loving eyes, and instantly I came up with ‘I’d rather be with my dogs, than be with you.'”
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Today, I’d Rather Be With My Dog sells merchandise for pet owners, as well as for their four-legged best friends. They’ve got apparel for all pet lovers to express their devotion and love.
What’s more, they’re all about helping dogs in need. “We donate to different causes weekly, everything from rescues, to canine cancer awareness, or military dogs overseas who need our help,” they claim on their website. I think the memes just got way more wholesome!
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Dogs in memes often act crazy and humanlike – and that’s one reason people love them so much. We decided to ask an animal behaviorist, Karen Wild, whether our interpretations of dogs being “just like us” are true or just figments of our imagination. She says it’s most likely both. “It can be a mixture of accurate behavior observation and inaccurate interpretation,” the animal behaviorist says.
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“In other words, memes usually represent a snapshot moment we might recognize, such as an emotion in a dog’s face, but they say the reason for that emotion could be something only humans would do or think,” Karen Wild explains. “It is very common for people to get it wrong, which is sometimes why dogs end up biting defensively.”
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As much as we’d like to read the behaviors of our dog positively, our interpretations when they’re being particularly meme-able can actually be the opposite. “Body signals in dogs can be due to negative emotions as well as positive ones, and often a mixture of these,” Wild goes on. “If a dog is racing around, often called ‘zoomies,’ for example, this can sometimes be a sign of overwhelm rather than happy excitement.”
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One of Karen’s missions is to educate owners to differentiate between playful behaviors and signs of potential behavioral issues. In fact, a dog acting quirky isn’t always as cute as we might think. “People need to learn the differences to prevent our lovely dogs [from] becoming stressed, unhappy, and defensive.”
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Karen recommends looking at multiple body parts on a dog to spot signs of distress. And consider context as well. “For example, a ‘wagging’ tail can be from a highly agitated and upset dog if the tail is held tense, high, and thrashing about. So, you’d look at the situation and the dog’s head, body, eye, mouth, and ear movements, too. Dogs are excellent communicators — we just have to learn their language!”
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But do dogs have a sense of humor, too? They seem to delight in stealing our socks, shoes, and other belongings, but do they do it on purpose and with the intent to make us laugh? The animal behaviorist says it’s possible dogs might steal your socks for different reasons each time they do it.
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“However, they do enjoy their own idea of fun, so maybe they just like socks, or maybe they like the idea of us joining in a game,” she admits. “Humans generally don’t react when a dog takes their own toy, but when it’s something [of theirs], suddenly, it looks to the dog as if ‘everyone wants to play.'”
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If there’s one thing Karen would like owners to know, it’s that not one dog deserves physical punishment. She says we, as owners, must learn the language of the dog. “I’d like people to stop saying dogs are ‘dominant’ or ‘spiteful’ and then punishing them, shouting, and smacking them when it’s us humans that have got their language wrong. Dogs are really intelligent creatures. If we really care about dogs, we learn how to communicate gently and safely.”
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