A Texas woman is convinced her rescue dog smiles when he sleeps and thinks she knows why.
Alexis Hayes from Fort Worth told Newsweek she was “scared of big shelter dogs” until the day she met Churro. “I just fell in love with him,” she said. “I didn’t even look at other dogs. I said I wanted him and I took him home the next day.
Hayes had been mourning the loss of one of her other dogs when Churro came into her life. “Back in January, Texas had a freeze and my bulldog got out in the night and ended up passing away,” she said.
Feeling low and conscious that her 12-year-old senior rescue no longer had a playmate, Hayes decided to adopt rather than shop. That’s when Churro came into the picture. “The shelter said they picked him up as a stray, but after getting to know him, I think he definitely had a family,” Hayes said.
While Churro’s past remains a mystery, one thing Hayes is almost certain of is that he’s happy in his new home. In a video posted to her TikTok @al3xis.444, Hayes shared a clip of Churro, fast asleep with what looks like a smile playing across his face. Writing alongside it, Hayes shared her theory as to why Churro is smiling. “He’s been home two weeks now and he sleeps with a smile,” she wrote. “I think he knows he’s never going back to the shelter.”
Hayes says Churro was “definitely” smiling in the video. “I’ve seen him do his relaxed face, and then I see him start to smile,” she said. “The way he looked so depressed in the shelter, he came to my house with his tail, fully wagging and rolling all over my couch like he had never been on the couch before. Ever since he has been home with me, there’s always a smile when he’s sleeping. His face at the shelter, I haven’t seen that face since.”
There is some debate in the scientific community about whether dogs are capable of smiling in the human sense of the word. A 2017 study published in the journal Scientific Reports concluded that dogs do not smile in the human sense, but produce relaxed, open-mouth facial expressions associated with positive emotional states and social bonding, which humans consistently interpret as smiles.
What’s beyond dispute, however, is the way Hayes and Churro have enriched each other’s lives. “After getting to know him, he is the biggest baby ever,” Hayes said. “He’s totally changed my view on big shelter dogs. He’s actually ten times nicer than my smaller shelter dog!”
Hayes has also learned something else about Churro during their time together: he’s deaf. She reckons that might explain why he’s less reactive than other dogs of his kind.
Whatever the case, Churro’s disability doesn’t hold him back in anything they do together. Churro loves to go on walks and is especially fond of car rides together. “I got him some goggles,” she said. “He loves to stick his head fully out the window and just enjoy his car ride.So he turned into my copilot.”
Even if Churro may not be smiling in the human sense of the word, he’s definitely smiling on the inside.
