This is a lovely study that helps address a super important question in psychological research: the extent to which other organisms, particularly intelligent mammals, are capable of experiencing (or, at least, displaying behavior indicative of) certain "complex" and presumedly human-centered emotions. It's wonderful to see these kinds of issues getting more attention.

I would like to ask, however, about the apparently serious missing condition: the one with a waggy, whiney, barky, stuffed battery-powered dog that *doesn't* get lavished with the owner's attention. Surely we'd want to know how dogs would react to this clearly unusual and potentially unsettling stimulus before drawing any strong conclusions about dogs' emotions.