How Long Do Dogs Remember You?

Will my dog remember me? This is a common concern for people, especially when they are going to be away from their dog for a few days or weeks. Well, fear not. The answer is yes, your dog will remember you, through your scent and your face, especially your eyes.

How Dogs Remember You

One important way dogs remember people is through their amazing sense of smell. Dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses, so their ability to sense smells is anywhere from 100 times to an incredible 10,000 times better than ours, depending mainly on the breed. Your dog can even easily sense your scent in the air, on your clothes, or on something you have touched, which is how rescue dogs work.

Your dog also has a strong associative memory, which means it will associate people with events, such as food, playing ball, or riding in a car. So, your dog will remember your scent and associate it with you and happiness.

Dogs Remember Faces

Research strongly supports the idea that dogs remember and recognize their human companions.

A 2020 study published in Animal Cognition (Eatherington, CJ et al) found that dogs can recognize their owners from photos, with male dogs being more likely to recognize their owners.

In 2015, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine how dogs remember faces. The study found that dogs have an area in their temporal lobes that is specifically dedicated to remembering faces. The researchers believe this may also help explain dogs' "acute sensitivity to human social cues."

In a 2013 study published in Animal Cognition, researchers used a computer screen with human faces flashed on it and found that dogs focused on the eyes of the people on the screen, regardless of whether the photos were upright or not. Dogs clearly recognized the faces of people they lived with or spent a lot of time with. They also concluded that dogs read facial expressions, such as anger, frustration, or happiness.

Dogs Can Remember Voices

An earlier study noted that when dogs hear a voice they recognize, they expect to associate it with a human face. This suggests that dogs "not only associate auditory and visual stimuli, but also actively generate visual images from auditory information."

How long can dogs remember people?

Researchers are divided on how long dogs' memories last. Because it is difficult to conduct studies over such long periods of time, there is a lack of hard evidence on how many years dogs can remember a person or event. That being said, most researchers believe that dogs can remember important people and events in their lives for many years, perhaps even until death.

So your dog will remember your smell, your face (especially your eyes), and your voice, and associate them with happiness, love, or snuggles, or maybe just food.