Did you know that your dog absorbs your emotions, both positive and negative? A new study of stress hormones in dog owners and their pets confirmed that, if you’re chronically stressed, chances are that your dog is too.
The study has been conducted at Sweden’s Linkoping University. “Dogs are quite good at understanding humans,” says senior author Lina Roth. “They’re definitely better at understanding us than we are at understanding them.”
The study included 58 pairs of dogs and their owners – 33 Shetland sheepdogs and 25 border collies. The owners were required to fill in questionnaires about their and their dog’s personalities and mental health.
Roth and her colleagues measured concentrations of cortisol in the owner’s hair and the dog’s fur over several months and concluded that anxious owners tend to make their dogs anxious as well. The opposite didn’t happen – anxious dogs don’t make their owners any more anxious.
