The average dog costs its human owner $10,000-20,000 over the course of its lifetime, from vet care and grooming to treats and toys to the new fad of doggie DNA testing. But what’s in it for us? Researcher Kerri Rodriguez – a Duke alum of evolutionary anthropology and current grad student with Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine – explores just that.
Rodriguez is a member of the OHAIRE Lab at Purdue, which stands for the Organization for Human-Animal Interaction Research and Education. Continuing her work from undergrad, Rodriguez researches the dynamic duo between humans and dogs – a relationship some 15,000 to 40,000 years in the evolutionary making. Rodriguez returned to Duke to speak on February 12th, honoring both Darwin Day and Duke’s second annual Dog Day.
It’s well-known that dogs are man’s best friend, but they do much more than just hang out with us. Dogs provide emotional support when we are stressed or anxious and are highly attentive to us and our emotional states.
In a study of 975 adult dog owners, dogs ranked closely to romantic partners and above best friends, children, parents, and siblings when their owners were asked who they turn to when feeling a variety of ways. Dogs provide non-judgmental support in a unique way. They have also been found to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, lower perceived stress in individuals, improve mood, and improve energy up to 10 hours after interactions. Therapy dogs are prevalent on many college campuses now due to these impacts and are found in hospitals for the same reasons, having been found to reduce subjective pain, increase good hormones and dampen bad ones, causing some patients to require less pain medications.
Along with reduced stress, dogs make us healthier in other ways, from making us exercise to reducing risk of cardiovascular disease. A study of 424 heart attack survivors found that non-dog owners were four times more likely to be deceased one year after the attack than victims who owned dogs.
The increased social interaction that dogs offer their human companions is also quite amazing due to the social facilitation effect they provide by offering a neutral way to start conversations. One study with people who have intellectual disabilities found that they received 30% more smiles along with increased social interactions when out in public with a dog. Similar studies with people who use wheelchairs have produced similar results, offering that dogs decreased their loneliness in public spaces and led to more social engagements.
Rodriguez also shared results from a study dubbed Pet Wingman. Using dating platforms Tinder and Bumble, researchers found that after one month, simulated profiles containing pictures with dogs received 38% more matches, 58% more messages, and 46% more interactions than simulated profiles without. Even just having a dog in photos makes you appear more likable, happier, relaxed, and approachable – it’s science!
A large bulk of Rodriguez’s own work is focused on dogs in working roles, particularly the roles of a service dog. She explained that unlike therapy or emotional support dogs, service dogs are trained for one person, to do work and perform tasks to help with a disability, and are the only dogs granted public access by the American Disability Association. Rodriguez is particularly interested in the work of dogs who help American veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Around one out of five post-9/11 military veterans have PTSD and the disorder is difficult to treat. Service dogs are becoming increasingly popular to help combat effects of PTSD, ranking at the third highest placed type of service dog in the United States. PTSD service dogs are able to use their body weight as a grounding method, provide tactile interruption, reduce hypervigilance, and prevent crowding of their veterans. However, because of the lack of research for the practice, the Veterans Association doesn’t support the use of the dogs as a therapy option. This is an issue Rodriguez is currently trying to address.
Working with a group called K9s for Warriors, Rodriguez’s research evaluated the mental health, social health, quality of life, and cortisol levels of veterans who have received service dogs and those who were on the wait list for dogs. Veterans with service dogs had lower PTSD symptoms, better mental health, and better social health. Rodriguez is now working on a modification to this study using both veterans and their spouses that will be able to measure these changes to their well-being and health over time, as well as assessing the dog’s health too. Unlike other organizations, K9s for Warriors uses 90% shelter dogs, most of which are mutts. Each dog is as unique as the human it is placed with, but no bond is any less special.
