Doctor Dog

Did you hear about the woman who went to see her doctor about her insomnia? First, a cat walked into the exam room and sniffed her, followed by a dog that licked her. The doctor then wrote out an invoice and handed it to her. “What’s that for?” she exclaimed. “You haven’t done anything.” The doctor replied: “That’s for the cat scan and the lab test.”

It’s true, not only is a dog man’s best friend, the family pet can be our doctor and therapist, as a new study confirms that people who grew up with a pet dog are less likely to suffer from psychiatric problems when they’re adults. 

Those who were around a dog in the first three years of their life seemed to have special protection and were 24 percent less likely to be schizophrenic. This would translate into 840,000 fewer cases of the condition in the US alone—just from having a pet dog.

The family dog also protected against bipolar disorder, although the effect wasn’t so marked, say researchers from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (see page 10).1

Strangely, a pet cat—or pet anything else, come to that—didn’t have similar health benefits. In fact, having a pet cat when you’re between the ages of nine and 12 slightly increased your risk of schizophrenia, and the researchers think it may have something to do with exposure to the cat parasite that causes toxoplasmosis.

For good or bad, the researchers think it all has to do with animal bacteria and viruses, but this sounds rather reductive and doesn’t capture the richness of the relationship we have with our family pet, as the good people who run Pets As Therapy (PAT) know only too well.

They have been bringing family dogs into UK hospitals and care homes to give patients a boost since 1983. More than 6,000 volunteers turn up with well-behaved dogs—jumping, licking or putting a paw out isn’t allowed—in what PAT calls “animal-assisted interventions.”

These days, you might be more likely to bump into a dog in a hospital than a doctor or nurse, who seem to be in short supply.And these Doctor Dogs don’t only give people a boost, they can sniff out cancer.

Dogs have 56 times more smelling receptors than humans and can detect even very low concentrations of aromas emitted by malignant tumors. A cat is less sensitive to smells, but still has twice the number of olfactory receptors as we have.2

In one of the first such cases recorded in the medical literature, a Border Collie detected cancer through its owner’s clothing at such an early stage that it was successfully treated. Doctors were convinced the dog had saved its owner’s life.3 

In another case, a 75-year-old man went to his local hospital after his pet Alsatian kept licking behind his ear. The dog had detected early signs of skin cancer, and again it was successfully treated. Doctors think that dogs can detect bladder, breast, colorectal, lung, ovarian, prostate and skin cancers.4

Inspiring as these stories are, they still don’t get to the essence of the special bond between people and pets. Other researchers have come closer; in one test, dogs could recognize emotions in other dogs—and in people. They were picking up visual and auditory clues to know if the person’s emotion was happy or playful, or angry or aggressive.5

This recognition also has a physiological effect on dogs, as their heart rate can change with the emotion—angry, happy, sad or neutral—that people act out around them, another study found.6

And, if we’re in a bind, a dog has our back. When their owners were locked in a box and pretended to be in distress, around half the dogs that were tested had spontaneous instincts to help them, even though they hadn’t had any rescue training beforehand, researchers discovered.7

Then there are all the other health benefits of walking a dog every day, and the calming effect that patting a dog can have. It can even lower your heart rate. 

So, if you have Doctor Dog, who needs the human variety?

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