I know that look! I sometimes punish my dog just because he has that look even before I’ve figured out what he’s done.

That's the "look what the cat did to the garbage and the litter box!!" look. Obviously totally innocent and relieved you're finally back!

booooooooo, what happened to innocent until proven guilty?!

You might be training him to think he's going to be punished whenever you get home regardless of what he did.

"but we don't have a cat"

"Well, that's the second news"

My mother's house was kind of a cat hotspot. We collected strays and sometimes we got a gift from the local shelter, when they had a pet that nobody else wanted.

Through this way we once received Pablo a very big grey tomcat who the shelter personnel dubbed "Satan himself". Turned out he just didn't like the shelter because at my mother's he was busy baking biscuits and suckling on blankets all the time. He was a huge drooling baby but he also had a man steak. He also visited two other families on a regular basis.

One of these families had a dog (rough collie) who hated cats so fucking much. He went crazy when he saw one and even when you said the word "cat" out loud he started to bark and look for it. So naturally Pablo always made sure their dog sees him, when he entered the flat while making sure to stay out of reach. And then take a nap there. While that poor fucked up dog went totally crazy. When the family threw him out, he started to visit the neighbors. I swear to God, he knew what he was doing to that dog.

Bad Canadian. Don't mistreat your dog

The worst part is, sometimes she looks like that just because she went into the kitchen while I was out. Didn't actually do anything bad while she was in there, but she knows she's not supposed to, so I get the guilty look and have to figure out if there's something that's been chewed on, or if she just crossed the demarcation line.

My kids can do the same look...

If you don't smell anything out of the ordinary, look for the debris.

bonus, something smells off. Not horribly off, but just… off

This image sounds like Waterphone from Kitchen Nightmares.

So grateful people are worried I’m abusing my dog. There’s a backstory and my dog is pretty smart. So when he looks guilty, he’s right 9/10 times. The backstory is that he sometimes eats his 💩. We’ve tried a variety of things. We now make sure we pick up his poo quickly, but we’re not always efficient enough. Hard to catch him in the act too. So when he comes in from outside looking guilty, I will pretend to smell his breath. If he cowers, I’ll look at him sternly and send him to sleep on the rug. I usually get confirmation when he burps a little while later and a foul smell lingers around him. Disgusting. But, he’s a spoiled boy. Other than that, he’s living a happy life.