Science Says: Pet Your Dog (Then Pet Them Again)

9 minutes ago

3 min read

A happy dog getting a belly rub on the grass at Dog Dude Ranch

We've always suspected that a good ear scratch is a two-way street. Now a team of scientists has put a little data behind the hunch.

What the researchers did

Psychologists at the University of Innsbruck in Austria invited 64 dog owners to their lab, each with their own dog (every pup was at least 2 years old and comfortable in a new room). The owners then sat through two rounds of deliberately stressful tasks: a rapid-fire trivia quiz with only seconds per answer, and mental math while a researcher on a video call gave nothing but critical feedback. (We'd need a long nap after that, too.)

After each round came a five-minute break with their dog. In one break, owners could pet, stroke and cuddle their dog as much as they liked. In the other, the dog sat close by on a short leash, where owners could see them and talk to them but not touch. Throughout, the team tracked heart rhythms and brain waves, and asked people how they felt.

What they found

The surprise: petting didn't make people bounce back any faster right after the first stressful round. The difference showed up next. Owners who got hands-on time with their dog during the break had calmer readings during the following stressful task, with steadier heart measures and more of the brain's relaxed "alpha" activity. Seeing their dog and chatting with them didn't produce the same effect. Touch was the ingredient that mattered.

One more twist: how stressed people said they felt didn't always line up with what their hearts and brains were showing.

Dr. Monica Berntsen, a psychologist who wasn't part of the study, offered Newsweek a nice way to picture it: stroking a dog you know answers the brain's "am I safe?" question "through the body rather than through thinking." And she noted that with our own dogs, the effect may run deeper, because "your own dog has spent years teaching your brain 'this one is safe.'"

Before you cancel your gym membership…

This was one small study, in a lab, with people and their own dogs, and it measured the owners' stress, not the dogs'. Dr. Berntsen also told Newsweek it's no treatment for anxiety. Still, it's a lovely nudge: a few minutes of hands-on time with your dog might help you meet the next hard thing a little calmer.

Read the full story in Newsweek, or the study in Biological Psychology.

Here's what that looks like at the ranch

We can't put a heart monitor on every guest, but we can tell you what we see every day:

Belly-rub breaks are part of the routine. Between rounds of group play, our team hands out plenty of hands-on cuddles, chin scratches and ear rubs. Nobody here has ever turned one down.
Room to be a dog. Over 2 hours of outdoor group play every day, on almost 3 acres of real grass, with friends matched by size, age and personality.
Someone's always home. A family lives right on the property, so there's a person here 24 hours a day.
The welcome-home pet. Our favorite part of pickup time? Watching that first big reunion scratch. Science says you've earned it, and so has your pup.