Ask any dog owner and they’ll tell you that their pooch knows when they are down and will do what they can to cheer them up. While some folks may think dog parents are just reading into things, science has now proven that it’s actually true.
A study published in the journal, "Learning & Behavior," seems to have proven that not only do dogs recognize when someone is upset and needs help, they're quick to do what they can to help. In the Johns Hopkins University study, participants were separated from their dogs by a magnetic door and were instructed to either hum "twinkle twinkle little star" or to cry.
While dogs on either side of the experiment opened the door to go to their owners about the same, the dogs whose humans were crying did so much faster.
And get this...The study was titled "Timmy's in the Well: empathy and prosocial helping in dogs." Sound familiar? Yup - it was done in homage to 1950s American cultural icon Lassie, who saved little Timmy who had fallen down a well.