Stressed? Your pet may feel it also, study says
NEW YORK — When dog owners go through a stressful period, they’re not alone in feeling the pressure — their dogs feel it too, a new study suggests.
Dog owners experiencing long bouts of stress can transfer it to their dogs, scientists report in a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
The Swedish researchers focused on 58 people who own border collies or Shetland sheepdogs. They examined hair from the dog owners and their dogs, looking at the concentrations of a hormone called cortisol, a chemical released into the bloodstream and absorbed by hair follicles in response to stress.
Depression, excessive physical exercise and unemployment are just a few examples of stress that can influence the amount of cortisol found in your hair, said Lina Roth of Linkoping University in Sweden.
Roth and her team found that the patterns of cortisol levels in the hair of dog owners closely matched that found in their dogs in both winter and summer months, indicating their stress levels were in sync.
She thinks the owners are influencing the dogs rather than the other way around because several human personality traits appear to affect canine cortisol levels.
The study results are no surprise, said Alicia Buttner, director of animal behavior with the Nebraska Humane Society in Omaha.
“New evidence is continually emerging, showing that people and their dogs have incredibly close bonds that resemble the ones that parents share with their children,” she said in an email.
But she said there isn’t enough evidence to assume that the influence goes only one way; it may go both ways.
“It’s not just as simple as owner gets stressed, dog gets stressed,” she said.
Many other factors could affect a person or dog’s stress levels and possibly even dampen them, she said.