If you’re a dog lover, you’ll know that they’re the best thing since…well, since years before sliced bread. While other people are perfectly fine, you relate to canines on a spiritual level.

You follow considerably more dogs than humans on Instagram, have absolutely no problem with becoming that crazy dog lady who just got her 27th pup, and when a human disappoints you your first thought is “my dog just wouldn’t do me that way.” They are your beating heart and you’re not afraid to scream it from the hilltops.

Perhaps one of the main reasons that we adore dogs so much is their ability to feel a lot of the things we do, whether it be joy, fear or grief. It’s been proven again and again that dogs have a high level of emotional intelligence and understanding of what’s going on around them, with a 2013 study showing that dogs can feel oxytocin, otherwise known as the “love hormone”.

Maybe that’s why when dog owner, Easton Dufur noticed that his pet Cookie was only eating exactly half of her bowl of dog food every day, he knew that she was feeling the exact same thing he was.