Students that pet, cuddle dogs have improved well-being and are less stressed, study finds

Petting and cuddling a dog can have a big impact on students’ well-being, according to new research from Canada.

Academics at the University of British Columbia divided 284 students into three groups: One could interact with a therapy dog, but wasn’t allowed to touch it, while a second group could both interact and touch their therapy dog. 

The third group, a control, met with a dog handler but no dog.

Before the experiment, the volunteers were asked about their overall wellbeing—including social connectedness, happiness, integration into the campus community, stress, homesickness, loneliness, positive and negative affect, and ‘self-perceptions of flourishing.’

All groups saw some improvement, but only the group allowed to pet their therapy dog illustrated major improvement in all the categories.

Touching, petting and cuddling dogs is key to getting the most out of canines’ ability to improve our well-being, according to scientists at the University of British Columbia 

‘There have been a number of studies that have found canine-assisted interventions significantly improve participants’ wellbeing, but there has been little research into what interactions provide the greatest benefits,’ John-Tyler Binfet, director of the school’s Building Academic Retention Through K-9s (BARK) program, said in a release. 

‘We know that spending time with therapy dogs is beneficial but we didn’t know why.’ 

In-person interaction, and especially touch, have been greatly reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Therapy-dog visitation programs are increasingly popular on college campuses and Binfet said they could be especially helpful for students who may be returning to in-person classes in the fall.

Volunteers were broken into three groups—one could interact with the dog but not touch it, another could both interact and pet the dog, and the third met with a dog handler but no dog. Only the ones who could touch the dog exhibited improvement in social connectedness, happiness, integration into the campus, homesickness, loneliness and other criteria

Earlier research by the department found that after a single drop-in session, students who participated in dog therapy reported significant stress reductions and increased levels of happiness and energy lasting for at least 10 hours.

Binfet added it was important to be mindful of the ratio of dogs-to-students, though, so that all participants can enjoy the benefits of touch.

The latest experiment, detailed in the journal Anthrozoös, follows a May 2021 study from Washington State University.

This research found that stress-management programs that focused on therapy dogs not only reduced students’ anxiety, but improved their executive thinking skills, too.

After completing a four-week program with animal therapy, students had improved cognitive skills, compared to others who were enrolled in stress-management workshops that didn’t involve animals.

The bump in brain power persisted for at least four weeks, according to their analysis, published in the American Educational Research Association’s journal AERA Open.

‘The results were very strong,’ Pendry said in a statement at the time.

‘We saw that students who were most at risk ended up having the most improvements in executive functioning in the human-animal interaction condition.’

A 2019 study by Pendry showed that petting animals for just ten minutes could reduce students’ stress in the short-term.