{"id":2728,"date":"2015-10-17T18:30:11","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familife.in\/en\/?p=2728"},"modified":"2015-10-17T14:46:51","modified_gmt":"2015-10-17T09:16:51","slug":"emotions-involved-in-the-human-dog-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/2728-emotions-involved-in-the-human-dog-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"Emotions involved in the human-dog connection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emotions

Photo: Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

If you may have noticed, dog owners love their dogs a great deal. For many people, dogs become just like members of the family. They talk to them, pet them lovingly, play with them like children and even dress them up on occasion. So when your pet dog<\/a> dies from old age, how do you cope? For most owners, the answer is, not well. They are left devastated and feel as though they can\u2019t talk to anyone about their loss.<\/p>\n

Human-dog connection and emotions can get pretty complicated when a pet<\/a> dies. It’s natural to feel a range of emotions when a pet dies.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople feel guilty because they feel worse when their dog dies than if a family member dies,\u201d Lori Kogan, associate professor of clinical sciences at Colorado State University\u2019s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, says. \u201cAnd then they think they\u2019re a bad person.\u201d But Kogan says that there\u2019s a reason people feel this strongly when their dogs die as their relationship with dogs is extremely complicated.<\/p>\n

A Yankelovich study for American Demographics found that nearly a third of respondents, half of which are single people, said that of everyone present in their lives, they depended mostly on pets for companionship and friendliness. It is a disturbing fact that owners have admitted that they can endure the loss of a friend or spouse, but they’re not sure how they would live without their dog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Research affirms that the feeling that humans have towards their dogs is a lot like love. According to\u00a0U.S. News<\/a>, a study, published the journal Science, there is increased levels of oxytocin \u2013 the hormone associated with both maternal and passionate love in humans \u2013 in both pups and humans when they interact.<\/p>\n

Oddly, this doesn\u2019t happen when humans play with wolf pups. This phenomenon is explained by the lead study author Takefumi Kikusui, a professor in the Department of Animal Science and Biotechnology at Azabu University in Japan, by suggesting there exists \u201ca coevolution between human and dogs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Is it healthy?<\/strong>
\nStudies have shown that petting a dog that\u2019s \u201cfamiliar and friendly\u201d can regulate your breathing, lower your heart rate and cause your tense muscles to relax. A study comprising of 550 people, published<\/a> in 2012 in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management, saw that stress levels among workers reduced during the course of the day if they brought their dogs to work. Sadly, those who left their dogs at home or didn\u2019t have a pet dog had an increasing stress level trend as the work day progressed.<\/p>\n

Is it possible to love your dog too much?
\n<\/strong>It stands to reason that your attachment to your dog could go too far. Kogan says, \u201cJust as you can have unhealthy relationships and attachments to people, you can have unhealthy attachments to pets.\u201d If you don\u2019t have anyone in your life, it is a bad sign, whether or not you have a pet dog to love. So, even though a 2011 study found that dog owners benefit from interacting with their pets, it\u2019s not advisable to give priority to your dog over interaction with people and socially staying aloof all the time. That should be a red flag. It\u2019s really easy to isolate yourself from real human contact as we gravitate towards a more online life, but even taking your dog out for a walk can mean you have interaction with other people, in the form of other dog owners.<\/p>\n

Thus, it is difficult when a person you love dies and it’s natural to feel sorrow and express grief. It is hard to forget your dog entirely. But in time, the painful feelings will recede. And when the appropriate time comes, remember that your local animal shelter is a great place to find your next special friend in need of a loving family.<\/p>\n

Please like FamiLife\u2019s\u00a0page<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook so that you get all our articles and others may find us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forget internet cats, is this \u2018puppy love\u2019 real and are we overdoing it with our dogs? Click to know more about emotions involved in the human-dog connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","_ef_editorial_meta_user_current-owner":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[408],"class_list":{"0":"post-2728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2728"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3570,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728\/revisions\/3570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2728"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/familife.in\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}