A new study reveals that if you're suffering from chronic stress, your pet could be feeling it too, proving the human-animal bond runs deeper than we initially thought.
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Let's take a deep, relaxing breath and delve into this.
Research has shown that dogs (and cats) mirror their owners when experiencing long bouts of stress.
When a human or pet is stressed, cortisol is released into the blood stream and stored in hair enabling a measurement of how stressed someone has been over the months before the sample is taken.
In one specific study, dogs (either Border Collie or Shetland Sheepdog breeds) and their female owners had their hair cortisol concentrations examined.
According to the study a significant correlation was found between dogs and humans with regard to long-term stress. Results showed that the personality of the owner was significantly related to the hair cortisol concentrations of their dogs, suggesting that dogs mirror the stress levels of their owners rather than the owner responding to the stress in their dogs.
The most interesting result was that owners with higher stress levels had dogs with higher stress levels.
We urge you to consider how your own lifestyle and relationship with your pet may affect the mental wellbeing of you both, and when going through a particularly stressful life event, we may need to find ways to reduce the impact on our faithful companions.
Some ideas include using calming pheromone sprays such as 'Adaptil' in a continuous diffuser in your home, paying close attention to behavioural changes in your pet and adjusting your approach to him/her or looking into natural products such as Zylkene tablets which promote relaxation and help your pet overcome short- or long-term distress.
Ultimately if you're stressed, your pet probably is too, so, after a rough week, give your pet lots of cuddles and give yourself one as well.
