Dog Law

B. The Dog's Place Today

Dogs still herd sheep, sniff out drugs, help their disabled owners, and guard buildings. But the main contribution of most dogs these days is companionship. Dogs make people smile and laugh, give them uncomplicated and unconditional love, and stick with them when others have gone.

Dogs as Companions

Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.
-- Robert Benchley

Studies and surveys of dog owners consistently reach a simple but important conclusion: Pets make their owners happy. For example, take a 1984 Psychology Today magazine survey. Thirteen thousand readers replied, including enough non-pet-owners (12%), the magazine concluded, to allow some conclusions to be drawn about differences between the two groups. Pet owners were more satisfied with their lives, both past and present. (That result may be partially explained by demographics: the owners were as a group more affluent, though less well educated, than the nonowners; also, more of them were married.) Fifty-seven percent of pet owners, if stranded on a desert island, would prefer to be with their pet than another person, according to the American Animal Hospital Association.

Many parents get a dog "for the children," because they believe that growing up with a dog gives a child companionship and teaches responsibility, gentleness, and compassion. They're right, according to several studies. For example, a group of preschoolers allowed to care for a puppy at their school became more cooperative and sharing, according to the researchers who studied them. "They have to put themselves in the pet's position and try to feel how the pet feels," explained one researcher. "And that transfers to how other kids feel."

On a standardized personality test (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), graduate students who had owned dogs as children showed significantly higher self-esteem ("ego strength") than those who had not had pets. The researcher theorizes that having a dog lets a child form attachments without fear, because of the unconditional acceptance the dog gives the child. The dog's trust helps the child trust himself.

And perhaps children should consider getting a dog "for the parents." According to one study of 454 new parents, men who are attached to their pet dogs also make better fathers. The dog-owning dads consistently scored higher on tests geared to measure their perceptions of happiness about their relationship with their babies, their marriages, and their role as fathers.

Dogs as Therapists

A psychotherapist would have much to learn from watching the way a dog listens.
-- Dr. Victor Bloom

Four out of five people who responded to the Psychology Today survey said that when they were lonely or upset, pets were often their closest companions. One woman in a difficult family situation wrote that without her dog, she "could not tolerate life."

This finding explains why the most striking benefits of an animal's companionship are reaped by people who lack close human relationships: neglected or disturbed children, lonely older people, or prison inmates. For example, a study of fifth-graders found that for children who were emotionally neglected, pets served as confidants and friends -- in essence, substitute parents.

Therapists and administrators now routinely use animals to treat or manage such patients. But for the most part, animals entered into the world of psychological therapy serendipitously. One psychiatrist, for example, happened to have his dog in his office when a young patient came early for an appointment; the dog became an integral part of the child's therapy. In the 1970s, an entire course of research was triggered when troubled adolescents in an Ohio State University hospital -- many of whom had refused to communicate with the staff -- asked to play with dogs used for behavioral research, which they had heard barking in a nearby kennel. Even the most withdrawn patients improved after contact with the dogs.

In one study of children with severe emotional problems, half were given traditional therapy, and the rest were allowed to play with a dog during their therapy sessions. The children who received conventional treatment got worse (as measured by standard tests of ability to control themselves and empathize), but the children who played with dogs got better.

It is not an exaggeration to say that pets can give people a reason to live. Often, people institutionalized in prisons or hospitals, for example, have no goals, no responsibility, no variety in their lives. Animals, either as visitors or residents, make the atmosphere more home-like and can have a wonderful, enlivening effect on morale.

An institutionalized person who is allowed to care for a pet may become more alert, involved, and sociable. As one prison psychiatric social worker put it, "the therapeutic results are nothing short of miraculous." Take the story of Jed, who had been in a nursing home for 26 years after suffering brain damage in a fall. He was believed deaf and mute. When he saw Whiskey, a German shepherd-husky dog that had just been placed in his nursing home, he spoke his first words in 26 years: "You brought that dog." He began to talk to the staff and other residents, and to draw pictures of the dog.

Dog owners go to the doctor less than people who don't own dogs, concluded another study of 1,000 elderly Californians. Dog owners had 21% fewer contacts with physicians than did participants who didn't own dogs. The researcher, UCLA professor Judith M. Seigel, surmised that the dogs were a "stress buffer," which lessened the need of their owners to seek out physicians in times of psychological stress.

If you do get sick, a pet can help you get better faster. One study compared postcoronary survival of pet owners versus nonowners; among the pet owners, 50 of 53 lived at least a year after hospitalization, compared to 17 of 39 nonowners. Even eliminating patients who owned dogs (whose health might have been improved just from the exercise of walking the dog), the pet owners still did better. In a follow-up study, the same researcher found that pet owners' worry about their animals actually speeded their convalescence by providing "a sense of being needed and an impetus for quick recovery."

Now that scientists in the medical and psychiatric communities have accepted what pet owners have always known -- that animals make people feel better -- they have set about documenting the physiological effects animals have on people. When people pet dogs, especially ones they have grown attached to, their blood pressure drops. The same happens when people talk to a dog -- although talking to another person usually raises blood pressure. Even the presence of a dog is comforting. In one study, people who took a standardized anxiety-measuring test when the experimenter's dog was in the room scored lower than those who took the test with only the experimenter present. Another experiment showed that women attempting a difficult task felt less stress and fared better when their dogs were nearby than when a human friend was close.

Let's let that old dog-lover Freud have the last word on the psychology of dog-people relationships. Here's how he described the "extraordinary intensity" with which he loved his dog, Topsy: "affection without ambivalence, the simplicity free from the almost unbearable conflicts of civilization, the beauty of an existence complete in itself ... that feeling of intimate affinity of an indisputed solidarity."

Next: C. Dogs in the Law

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