Pets, Health and People

Only when human-pet relationships are strong, it seems, do owners get physical and mental benefits from their animals

- BY LYDIA DENWORTH

WE GOT OUR FIRST DOG when my oldest son was 10. A friend who was a teacher told me that was a perfect age for a kid to have a pet. “Jake can throw his arms around the dog when he doesn’t feel comfortable hugging you anymore,” he said.

It took a bit for me to get over his reminder that my child was growing up, but I immediately recognized my friend’s insight. A beloved animal can make everything seem better. And most of us believe strongly that our pets make us healthier.

Yet the science of human-animal interaction has found mixed results when it comes to physical and psychological health benefits from pets. Depending on the study, for example, people with pets are either less or more likely to be depressed. Experts say this seesawing probably happens because, for some owners, pets serve as a calming influence and emotional support. But in other cases, the study may include more people who are already struggling mentally and get pets to try to feel better; then such participants are counted as depressed.

Owning a dog has consistently been associated with higher levels of physical activity, no doubt because of all that walking, which has social benefits, too. One of the very first studies in the field, published in 1980, found that people who had been hospitalized for a heart attack or coronary artery disease were more likely to survive the following year if they had a pet, and the researchers suspected that physical activity from walking dogs was partly responsible, although the results held for other kinds of pets, too. A 2019 analysis of several studies, published in