Sweet Doggy Flashes A Smile Upon Owner's Return

Usually, when dogs are said to be “smiling" in the anthropological sense (out of happiness), it is when they have their ears in the relaxed state for the breed, relaxed eyes, and a big wide open mouth, with tongue hanging out, sometimes panting too. When they are relaxed, the body language of the dog who is smiling often contains some of the loose, wiggly signals we would see in a happy dog.

Still, we will not try and take away from this adorable pup’s happiness! When the owner noticed that his loyal companion would lift himself up on the railing on his doggy cage and flash a very obvious smile for his owner, he whipped up his phone and started recording. Boy, are we glad he did because this has to be, hands down, the cutest pooch we have seen!

We all love to watch Bill, the smiling Labrador flash a smile on cue. We adore every bit of that 10-second clip and we laugh just as hard as his owner does when she sees how dang cute her pooch is. But this guy, oh man...we just want to hug and squeeze him so hard!

Many animals have different complex visual cues to express their emotions that may preclude the need for smiling. Dogs already communicate with each other by raising their haunches, baring their teeth, changing their postures and raising, lowering or wagging their tails, so it would be reasonable to expect that smiles just aren’t a part of their already complex physical vocabulary.