Dogs. I’ve owned them all my life and can’t even begin to imagine how desolate I would feel without one. Owning dogs, or spending time with them, has been scientifically proven time and again to have huge benefits for your physical well-being and an even greater impact on your mental health. So how and why does spending time with dogs (or other furry companions) improve your overall health?
- Companionship
Dogs are especially loyal and loving creatures, so offer their owners comfort, reassurance, companionship, emotional and physical security, and unconditional love.
- Responsibility and Motivation
Owning a dog brings with it responsibility and motivation – the responsibility for feeding and caring for your pet, and the motivation to exercise it regularly and sufficiently. In fulfilling these responsibilities, you should notice some improvements in your physical and mental health, even if the changes are small at first.
- Depression
Walking a dog can increase your physical level of fitness, but also give your mood a boost. Here’s why:
- walking releases endorphins, which reduce physical pain and improve your mood.
- walking has a calming effect – it can reduce adrenaline levels which, in turn, lessen levels of anxiety and stress.
- walking increases levels of seratonin, the ‘happy chemical’ or mood elevator.
- walking enables more efficient use of dopamine, a neurotransmitter which signals responses of pleasure and motivational reward.
- walking increases your levels of Vitamin D3, which is absorbed directly from the sun; this enables increased seratonin and dopamine release to the brain, and subsequently can elevate a low mood.
- walking increases oxygen levels in the body and brain, enabling dopamine receptors to function more efficiently and lift a low mood.
Click here for an article about the benefits of walking and mental health.
- Socialising
Walking dogs inevitably leads to meeting other dog owners, and sometimes chatting – usually about dogs! – and occasionally these chance encounters can lead to lasting friendships. Social isolation can be a key ingredient of depression, and it is believed that people who are socially connected are more likely to be mentally healthy. Socialising with other dogs is also good for your canine companion – dogs need doggie friends too!
Click here for a wonderful article, How getting a dog saved my life
- “The Feral Pile”
The Feral Pile is not a phrase that you will find in any study about human and canine relationships or behaviour, but it is the way which I describe the most important behavioural aspect to my relationships with my dogs, and why they are so important to me. I think the simplest way to describe it is ‘mutual bonding’ and the behaviours which bring that about. The picture at the top of this post is of my current dog, a golden labrador, who was 5 months old at the time. She had had an unpromising start to her life, and this picture was taken the day I brought her home; she was clearly needy, anxious, in desperate need of reassurance, and we spent our first week together snuggled up in a feral pile on the sofa. She is now a strapping 3-year-old who weighs in at 30 kilos, but we have continued our tradition of spending several hours each day in the feral pile together; she loves the reassurance and attention, and I love everything about it: her scent, her soft velvet fur, her warmth, her rhythmic breathing, even her snoring in my ear, her reassurance, her devotion, and her beautifully gentle personality. Being in the feral pile immediately reduces my levels of stress and I feel much more relaxed, the warmth and softness of snuggling up to her relaxes my muscles and my physical pain seems less, and her gentle breathing has a soporific effect usually resulting in the best quality sleep I’m likely to have that day. Every day, I smile at her behaviour or her expressions and she lifts my mood considerably, which is hugely important since my mental health has been poor for a while now. Yet, despite the obvious mismatch of having a large energetic dog alongside my current mobility problems, she brings with her enormous reassurance, affection and a whole host of other intangible, wonderful things which far outweigh the challenges. If we can’t manage to do something or if it all gets too messy, we stay calm and simply revert to the feral pile until all is well again, and then we try again another day.
Bare Bones 