Dogs absolutely build a bond with their people. Any dog owner knows this. No. They build a relationship with the person who feeds them, is nice to them, takes them for walks, they are bonded with the people they live with but that bond is generally superficial. If you rehomed your dog tomorrow they would settle into a new home within weeks and that bond would be transferred to their new humans.
Two examples:
My parents have a friend who has moved around a lot. She emigrated from abroad to here before the days of pet passports and the like and she felt that her dog would not have coped in quarantine, which to be fair, it probably wouldn’t have, because kennels are such a different environment to a home one. ‘So she rehomed him to friends and came home while in bits thinking about how much this dog would be pining for her, wondering in fact whether he would survive because he was so attached to her. A year later she went back for a holiday and went to see these friends, and her dog, imagining how excited the dog would be to see her, and wondering in fact whether she would be doing the dog harm when she left again.
The dog didn’t even go to her when she walked in their house. By then he was bonded to his humans,and she wasn’t one of them.
Secondly:
I have a lot to do with guide dogs. I have owned three of them in fact, and I think that it’s fair to say that the bond between a blind person and a guide dog is far different to that between a person and their pet, the guide dog is with them permanently for a start, is there when they cross roads, walk down streets, enabling an independence which many otherwise wouldn’t have.
But before the guide dog goes to that blind person, they go to a puppy walker for a year. A person who is there through their initial start in life, who is responsible for their traininkg, who sits up with them in those first nights when they have been taken away from their mum. And it’s fair to say that during that time they will build a bond with that puppy walker, and will consider them their humans. They don’t know after all that they will be moving on in a year.
And then they go into training and they go and live with a boarder. A different person who feeds them, takes them for walks etc, although the boarder does drop them off at doggy school every morning and take them home again at night.
And then, after all that, they are matched with a blind person, and they become that person’s constant. That person is their human, the one who feeds them, takes them for walks, is there with them. That person becomes their human and they bond with that person.
But unfortunately sometimes when a guide dog retires it is not possible for that person to keep them, if they get another guide dog for instance and are working full time then the dog is used to being with people all day and leaving it at home would be unfair on it. Of course, at the time it doesn’t know that, but it is then rehomed to someone who feeds it, takes it for walks, ... can you see a picture here? And those guide dogs don’t pine away. Many will recognise their owners if they visit them, but their bond is transferred to their new humans.
The bond PP talks of above is the bond which humans have with their dogs, the bond the dogs develop in return is not the same.
There was a thread on here a few months ago from a PP asking whether it was wrong to love her child more than her dog now that her child had been born. The responses on here were jaw-dropping. From people saying that the oP should rehome the dog and never, ever have another pet. That she was somehow abnormal for not loving her dog the same as her children, and yes, those saying they would save a dog from a burning building instead of their child. TBH I don’t believe that for a second, I think that posters just put that out there to be seen as being loving dog owners, any person who would genuinely save a dog above their child has no place having children.