Benefits of Dogs on Human Health and Well-Being

Can the benefits of love and devotion be measured with a number?

Based on new research — which attaches a numerical measure to the positive effect humans get from interacting with service dogs — the answer is YES.

As applications for service dogs continue to increase, researchers at the Center for the Human-Animal Bond determined there was a need to use a standardized measure to evaluate the beneficial effects of service dogs on human health and well-being. And, while previous studies have demonstrated an improvement in quality of life for people with service dogs, there has not been a study showing measurable benefits – until now.

New research findings from a Purdue University study - “The Impact of Service Dogs on Family Members’ Psychosocial Functioning” - funded by Elanco Animal Health quantifies psychosocial health and quality of life of service dog recipients and their families.

The study adds to current knowledge by using standardized measures to demonstrate the benefits of service dogs and revealed the distinctive role that a service dog may have in the lives of individuals with a disability or chronic condition and the families of those individuals.

In fact, the results showed that compared to those on a waitlist to be matched with a service dog, individuals with a service dog exhibited significantly better psychosocial health, including higher levels of social, emotional, and functioning at work and/or school. And, significantly, the study shows that family members also benefit from interaction with service dogs.

For family members, living with a service dog was most closely associated with less health-related worry; as well as better overall psychosocial health and emotional functioning, less total family impact from the chronic condition, and better emotional health-related quality of life functioning. These findings provide evidence that service dogs CAN impact several aspects of family members’ psychosocial health and functioning.

“Our strongest finding was that family members living with a service dog experience was less worry about the family me members health and that seemed to translate to other emotional functioning as well as less of an impact from the chronic condition on to the family member functioning,” said Jessica Bibbo , PhD, research scientist at the Center Research and Education, Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging in Cleveland, Ohio.

“Concurrently we looked at the impact on the service dog recipient themselves and for those we found that they had an impact not only on emotional functioning but also social, work and school functioning which seemed to be more global on the impact,” continued Bibbo. “For family members it really was that health –related worry about their family members and their own emotional functioning.”

“Having a service dog has been really amazing for us,” said Tracy Salazar, the mother of a service dog recipient and the service dog. “My daughter has seizures, shes 26 and has had a service dog for about a year. He comes and gets stuff when she has a seizure. Now I can get a cup of coffee in the morning and let my guard down a little bit. Then he takes us to her and he snuggles with her while she is seizing and after and it just somehow makes the whole experience a little more tolerable.”

For more information visit canineassistants.org and Celebrate the Bond

Courtesy: Canine Assistants