If you own a dog, you already know that hanging out with your dog makes you feel better.
To dog lovers, it’s not a surprise to hear that dogs are being used therapeutically for people with health problems like PTSD, cancer and even dementia.
Therapy dogs are growing in popularity. Over 50,000 therapy dogs are in the USA and they are growing popularity in many other countries. Therapy dogs are trained and certified by an organization so they can help people in hospitals and other health care facilities.
Studies show that people benefit from these animals, but do the dogs? Research has been studying what these dogs might be thinking about and the studies are helpful.
Applied Animal Behaviour Science published a study that showed that therapy dogs working in the pediatric cancer world did not show stress and actually seemed to like it.
This study was interesting in that it took a look at five different hospitals. Over 100 patients and twenty-six therapy dogs were included in this research. This is one of the largest studies of this type according to Amy McCullough, National Director of Research and Therapy at American Humane and principal investigator of the study.
A working dog
Cortisol, a stress hormone, was measured in the dog’s saliva. A sample was taken at the canine’s home and also during actual therapy sessions “at work” at the hospital.
The trouble with cortisol is that it is not specific to “bad stress.” A dog that loves chasing a ball may also elevate their cortisol levels.
As part of the study, the dogs were captured on tape and then later analyzed. Twenty-six separate dog behaviors were studied and put into three major categories. These categories were 1) friendly actions like coming up to a person 2) moderate stress actions like shaking and 3) high-stress actions such as whimpering.
