The Fuzzy Science on Whether Fido Is Actually Good for You

[Jim Allen]

My opinion is that if your pet makes you happy that is great for you and on the physical side if it means you get more exercise because of your pet that's not bad either, but pet ownership isn't for everyone, so please don't buy a pet because of claimed health benefits or Xmas.


Article in full: https://www.poz.com/article/fuzzy-science-whether-fido-actually-good
June 25, 2024 • By Undark and Michael Schulson

In brief:

Research suggesting that pet ownership improves health is largely funded by the pet care industry. Does that matter?

For more than a decade, in blog posts and scientific papers and public talks, the psychologist Hal Herzog has questioned whether owning pets makes people happier and healthier.

It is a lonely quest, convincing people that puppies and kittens may not actually be terrific for their physical and mental health. “When I talk to people about this,” Herzog recently said, “nobody believes me.” A prominent professor at a major public university once described him as “a super curmudgeon” who is, in effect, “trying to prove that apple pie causes cancer.”

Herzog argues, the scientific evidence that pets can consistently make people healthier is, at best, inconclusive — and, at worst, has been used to mislead the American public.

Few, if any, experts say Herzog is exactly wrong — at least about the science. Over the past 30 or so years, researchers have published hundreds of studies exploring a link between pet ownership and a range of hypothesized benefits, including improved heart health, longer lifespans, and lower rates of anxiety and depression.

The results have been mixed. Studies often fail to find any robust link between pets and human well-being; some even find evidence of harms. In many cases, the studies simply can’t determine whether pets cause the observed effect or are simply correlated with it

The pet care industry has invested millions of dollars in human-animal interaction research, mostly since the late 2000s. Feel-good findings have been trumpeted by industry press releases and, in turn, dominated news coverage, with headlines like “How Dogs Help Us Lead Longer, Healthier Lives.”

At times, industry figures have even framed pet ownership as a kind of public health intervention. “Everybody should quit smoking. Everybody should go to the gym. Everybody should eat more fruits and vegetables. And everyone should own a pet,” said Steven Feldman, president of the industry-funded Human Animal Bond Research Institute, in a 2015 podcast interview.

The problem with that kind of argument, Herzog and other experts say, is that it gets out ahead of the evidence (and that not every person is equipped to care for a pet). “Most studies,” said Herzog, “do not show the pattern of results that the pet products industry claims."

“What happens is we try to compare people with pets, to people without pets, and then we say, ‘People with pets have X, Y, and Z differences.’ It actually is a really invalid way of approaching the research question,” said Kerri Rodriguez, who directs the Human-Animal Bond Lab at the University of Arizona. A study finding that cat owners are more likely to be depressed, for example, may be picking up on a real connection. But it could just be that people already experiencing depression are likelier to get cats.

Herzog agrees that having a pet can have real benefits. At the end of a recent conversation, he reflected on his cat, Tilly, who died in 2022. She used to watch TV with him in the evenings, and she would curl up on a rocking chair in his basement office while he worked. The benefits of their relationship, Herzog said, were real but perhaps hard to measure — among the intangible qualities that are difficult to capture on research surveys.

"If you’d asked me, ‘Did Tilly improve the quality of your life?’ I’d say absolutely,” he said. “My health? Nah.”

[Tonny2]

              ojo.           Hello there!… Well, before my Fido, I didn’t exercise too much. I went from 500 steps a day to around 10,000 steps a day after I got my fighter Fido (R.I.P.). I still have Fido 2 and still walking a lot when the weather allows it, it’s been pretty hot hearing high. Mentally speaking, Fido helps me when I feel Anxious. And I prefer dogs because every time I get home, they are happy to see me while cats. They don’t give a damn when I get home. In Mexico, I used to have two cats and two dogs…as Jim said, pets are not for everyone,  they need attention and love…humble opinion

[leatherman]

"If you’d asked me, ‘Did Tilly improve the quality of your life?’ I’d say absolutely,” he said. “My health? Nah.”

Never disparage optimism. 

While "quality of life", and even "health", can be subjective, an improved quality of life results in happiness which often results in improved health. "Improved" is subjective too. However, happier people tend to have less stress resulting in fewer heart issues. Happier people are more likely to take their medications, exercise, and to try to stay healthier.

Scientifically, a lot more data will have to be collected to ever actually know if having a pet results in better health. There are just so many factors. Does the person have the temperament, time, and resources to properly care for the pet? Does the pet itself have the right temperament to match with it's owner? Just those four factors seem so few; but each of those has literally a whole range of possibilities and combination of possibilities.


For myself, twice after being surviving PCP, I left the hospital to go home to care for my dogs. I mean, a pack of 7 dogs was just too much responsibility to leave to someone else. (I forgive Randy for leaving me behind with the pack because his being infected two years before me was the death sentence he had no chance to escape.) Leaving the hospital against medical advice, I knew that I was either going to die at home or was going to live. I struggled every day to to care for them, and little by little, it got easier as I regained my health.

I've outlived that pack of dogs and then had a second pack with four dogs. Now my husband and I had our own pack of 2 dogs. I love my doggos; they love me; and my quality of life and my health are both greatly improved by all that love.