How our pets are ‘catching’ depression
According to new research, three-quarters of dogs in the UK suffer from poor mental health. Arabella Byrne is not convinced…
WThe return to work post-covid has led to a sharp rise in owner guilt – and depressed dogs
inston Churchill, like Samuel Johnson before him, called his depression his “black dog”. Like a faithful hound, his paralysingly low moods were – we must imagine – lingering at his heel, waiting to be attended to, demanding things of him. This metaphor has become particularly instructive of late, not because we use it as Churchill or Johnson did, but because we have become preoccupied with the mental health of our dogs.
Research published by the charity Guide Dogs reveals that three-quarters of dogs in this country are depressed. That’s approximately 8.8 million pooches that feel low, can’t get out of their baskets and generally don’t give a bark anymore.
What’s more, we, the dog-owning populous, have other dark confessions to make: according to the poll, only 36 per cent of us are able to spot the signs of poor canine mental health, while one in four admit to not subscribing to the notion that dogs may suffer with poor mental health.
As a long-standing dog owner, I am curious to know how this depression may manifest in my enormous German shorthaired pointer, Percy. I crouch down beside his sleeping form on the sofa to scrutinise his mood but he does not turn to face me. I ask him if he’d like anything to eat but he continues to stare into space. Increasingly perturbed, I proffer him his “chicken-for-life” plastic bone, but he folds himself into a tighter position using his large ears as curtains to evade eye contact.
As per the report’s findings, my dog exhibits the classic signs of depression: low activity levels, loss of interest in things they used to enjoy and reduced appetite. However, when I offer a walk, Percy erupts off the sofa like a speckled missile hurtling towards me at high speed (another sign of depression, apparently). The patient will live, but the idea is planted in my head.
As dog behavioural expert Alexandra Horowitz, author of Our Dogs, Ourselves, attests, our interpretation of the emotional states of dogs is worrying, not to say almost entirely wrongheaded. “If a dog is regularly by your side, that looks less like commiseration than simple desire for proximity; if you keep pocketsful of cheese, their attention may have other explanations,” she notes.
In the air in this country now, and perhaps particularly since Covid (more on which later), is the idea that dogs follow us around not just physically but also, psychically.
While I suffer from this affliction, I can’t help but think that there is some level of projection at work here, some rather indulgent anthropomorphism that underwrites the concern for our dogs. Might we be depressed, rather than the other way around? Certainly, we have reason to be: war in Ukraine, two years of lockdowns and variants, the inability to properly plan ahead.
As with most mental health vulnerabilities, an industry has sprung up around this twitch. There are bootcamps for dogs to deal with their anxiety, and chewable supplements to reduce stress and nerves. In 2019, payouts to treat mental health problems in pets topped £750,000 – a 50 per cent rise on 2018.
In line with this, demand for animal behavioural experts has surged, often on referral by vets. Dog shrinks can charge anything from £300 to £500 for four hours of “desensitisation” therapy for dogs recovering from trauma such as fireworks, separation anxiety, or just good, old-fashioned blues.
Although there is an ombudsman for the industry, the Animal Behaviour and Training Council (ABTC), as a trade it is unregulated. According to the ABTC website, all dog behavioural therapists must be accredited with an animal behaviour degree.
Sadly, however, far too many people pose as animal behavioural specialists without ever having to prove their expertise. All you need is an Instagram account and some good pictures, according to animal therapist Rosie Barclay – this despite the industry being hand-in-glove with veterinary practice. Those of us who have struggled to find a decent human therapist, may relate enthusiastically.
More dogs means more business. And never have we been so dogobsessed in this country than since Covid struck in the spring sunshine of 2020. Faced with the prospect of indefinite confinement, many threw caution gaily to the wind (and their houses) and bought a puppy. There are now 12 million dogs in the UK with 3.2 million households having acquired a pet since the start of the pandemic.
Overwhelmingly, the largest proportion of new owners (59 per cent) are Generation Z and Millennials, those born between 1981 and 2012, who also happen to be the core demographic who are expected to return to the workplace after the work-from-home boon has ended.
Those who owned their dogs before this watershed may feel suitably smug at this point. Dogs, who demand far more exercise and company than their feline counterparts, are the undoubted losers, now left alone for long hours of the working day where previously they had been in constant company.
Accordingly, this has led to a sharp rise in owner guilt, and in turn, in the diagnosis of canine depression and anxiety: the Kennel Club reports a 120 per cent increase in the number of visits to its website for dog training and behavioural advice as flustered owners scrabble to understand why their dog goes bonkers when they leave the house. Owners who now believe that their dog is clinically depressed.
All of which amounts to a perfect storm of anxiety, one which is becoming dangerously, not to say scandalously, expensive. Perhaps we may blame the Victorians for this over-identification with our dogs. Prof Jane Hamlett, a historian at Royal Holloway, points out that the Victorians assigned pets “moral value” where hitherto they were considered either the absurd lapdogs of aristocratic women or fit for work only.
Fast forward more than a century and we are still trying to read dogs’ emotions and we are still failing. Society’s constant admonition that we get to work with our own feelings has become curiously distorted to the point where we flatten the boundary between ourselves and our dogs as if we’re sharing a kind of furry hive mind.
As a dog fanatic, I’m increasingly convinced that neither unchecked anthropomorphism, nor denial of the canine emotional experience, is right. A well-exercised dog that is not left alone for too long and properly fed seems a good place to start.
Maybe we should attend to our own black dogs. Better mental health all round is certain to follow from a brisk walk around a muddy field and a mad wrangle with a poo bag in the whipping wind – and I’m sure Churchill would have concurred.
I try not to pay much attention to celebrity trends. This one, however, sounds a tiny bit concerning. Because lots of famous people seem to have stopped washing properly.
It started last year, when Ashton Kutcher, the actor, announced that he cleans “my armpits and crotch daily, and nothing else ever”.
There rapidly followed a wave of similar confessions. Actor Joe Keery of Stranger Things revealed that he doesn’t wash his hair. Matthew Mcconaughey declared that he hadn’t used deodorant in 35 years.
And Marina Fogle, wife of Ben, reported that their whole family had “given up soap” – and were all the happier for it.
The latest revelation comes from Cameron Diaz, who says that not only has she stopped using beauty products, she doesn’t even bother washing her face.
This, she explains, is her way of rebelling against “the societal objectifications and exploitations that women are subjected to”.
All these celebrities are, of course, entitled to live however they please. I’m just a little worried about the potential impact on wider society. After all, the famous are highly influential. Millions slavishly imitate them. Especially the young.
It’s hard enough to get teenage boys to wash as it is. Soon it will be impossible.