What does it really mean to understand a dog?

In this conversation, Dr Marc Bekoff explores how dogs experience the world and what helps them thrive emotionally, socially, and psychologically.

Marc Bekoff is Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder and one of the world’s leading voices on animal emotions. He is a long time collaborator and close friend of the late Dr Jane Goodall through the Jane Goodall Institute. His research has helped expand scientific understanding of animal sentience, emotion, and social intelligence.

In this episode, Marc explains why every dog is an individual shaped by personality, history, and context. He shares why choice, safety, and trust sit at the centre of healthy relationships and how dogs communicate continuously through movement, scent, posture, and behaviour.

We discuss what it means to become fluent in dog. How learning their language deepens connection. How agency supports emotional wellbeing. And why observing dogs in natural social settings reveals behaviours that cannot be seen in isolation.

Marc also reflects on his decades of fieldwork with dogs, wolves, coyotes, and other social mammals, and on the influence of Jane Goodall’s approach to observation, patience, and respect.

This episode explores:

→ How dogs express emotion and social intelligence→ Why individual personality matters more than labels→ What agency looks like in everyday life→ How dogs communicate through scent, movement, and choice→ The role of trust in learning and connection→ What long term observation reveals about behaviour→ The legacy of Jane Goodall’s work and its relevance today

This is a conversation about attention, curiosity, and relationship. About learning to see the dog in front of you.

And about how understanding another being can quietly change the way we live alongside them.