Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat

by Hal Herzog

  If your puppy needs some downtime, she might enjoy an afternoon at the L.A. Dogworks, a five-star dog resort that promises your pet a “total wellness experience.” This includes an hour in the Zen Den, billed as a “simple Eastern retreat for your dog to relax and indulge.” Many luxury hotels now offer services for pets. Your dog is welcome at the Sarasota Ritz-Carlton—if he or she weighs less than twenty pounds and you are willing to pay an upfront $125 room-cleaning fee. For another $130, the Sarasota Ritz offers privileged pups their choice of the Swedish Pet Massage, the Full Body Relaxation Massage, the Invigorating Sports Massage, and the gentler Senior Pet Massage.

  The blurring of the boundaries between pets and people is not a new phenomenon. This theme played out in nineteenth-century France. As the French middle class grew in size and influence, so did their fascination with pets, and within fifty years dogs and cats were transformed from working animals to family members. By 1890, luxury and pet ownership went hand-in-hand. The wardrobe closet of a well-decked-out dog in Paris might include boots, a dressing gown, a bathing suit, underwear, and a raincoat. Dog-grooming salons sprang up in France, as did pet cemeteries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, dead dogs were dumped in the Seine, but by midcentury, Parisian animal lovers were having their deceased dogs and cats interred in pet cemeteries or their heads mounted for display over the mantle.

  The current craze for pet clothing, vacation spas, and bottled water is emblematic of a trend that Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske call trading up. They argue that gourmet pet foods and dog day spas are driven by the same cultural forces that fueled the demand for $6 cups of coffee and $6,000 Viking stoves. But what happens when the bottom falls out? Do people still spend money on pets when times get hard?

  According to David Lummis, an authority on pet industry market trends, the answer is yes. As the economy was tanking in 2008, total sales of PetSmart, the country’s largest retail pet specialty chain increased 8.4%, to over $5 billion. Similarly, the online pet pharmacy PetMed Express reported a 16% increase in fourth-quarter sales in 2008. Lummis expects that the retail pet market will soon top $56 billion.

  I asked Kasey Grier, whose book Pets in America is the definitive history of the human-animal bond in the United States, what accounts for the extraordinary increase in the money we spend on our animals. She believes that pets, particularly dogs, are being framed by the pet industry as consumers themselves. Many people think their pets desire and deserve the same stuff they want: biscotti, breath mints, raincoats, summer camp, spa treatments—even top-dollar weddings.

  The question is who, aside from members of the American Pet Product Manufacturers Association, benefits from these excesses? The ASPCA’s Steve Zawistowski, author of the book Companion Animals in Society, says, “If you buy a $20 coat for your dog to protect her from the cold, it’s for the dog. If you buy her a $200 coat, it’s for you.” Morris Holbrook, professor of marketing at Columbia University, offers this advice to corporations trying to tap into the lucrative pet products marketplace: “Remind people that they are not really pet owners, that pets are not possessions, but rather animal companions with needs, wants, and rights comparable to those of other family members.”

  Pets used to be fairly inexpensive. Until the years after World War II, most household animals in the United States lived on table scraps and never saw the inside of a veterinary clinic. This is no longer the case. The estimated lifetime cost of pet ownership is about $8,000 for a medium size dog and $10,000 for a cat (that’s because cats live longer). But what kind of bang are you getting for your pet buck?

  DO PETS REALLY PROVIDE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE?

  A couple of years ago, I surveyed pet owners at western North Carolina veterinary clinics and asked them what they got out of their relationship with their pets. Three themes emerged loud and clear: “My pets are members of my family,” “My pets are my children,” and “My pets are my friends.” In a follow-up study, Robin Kowalski, a social psychologist at Clemson University, and I asked dog and cat owners to evaluate a series of statements comparing the benefits they derived from their relationships with their best human friend and the benefits derived from their relationships with their pets. Our subjects said that human and animal friends were equally good at providing companionship, ameliorating loneliness, and making people feel needed. Human friends were better than animal companions when it came to being someone to confide in or talk to. There was one area, however, in which pets had the edge over human friends: providing unconditional love.

  Although a glut of feel-good books tout the idea that pets provide their owners with unconditional love, I believe the unconditional love theory is overrated as an explanation of why humans live with animals. If pets were so great at providing unconditional love, you would think that everyone would be bonded to the animals in their homes. They are not. In a 1992 study, 15% of adults said they were not particularly attached to their pets. In informal polls I have taken in my class, roughly a third of my students indicate that someone in their family actively dislikes or even hates the family pet.

  The demography of pet-keeping also presents a problem for the unconditional love hypothesis. This view predicts that people living alone would have the most need for unconditional love and thus have the highest levels of pet ownership. This is not the case. In fact, adults living alone have the lowest rates of pet ownership, while adults raising school-aged kids have the highest. Interestingly, while adults with children have the highest rates of pet ownership, as a group, they are less attached to their animals than people who live alone with pets. In fact, pet attachment drops a notch with each additional person added to a family. Pets in homes with young children really get the shaft. For example, only about 25% of pets in families with children are groomed every day compared to nearly 80% of pets who reside with adults who do not have kids. Dogs and cats in childless homes are the ones most likely to be showered with Christmas presents and go on family vacations. Sadly, the dog that was “our baby” during the first years of a couple’s marriage is often demoted the moment their first child comes home from the hospital.

  Not one to mince words, Cambridge University’s Anthony Podberscek, editor of the journal Anthrozoös, calls the unconditional love theory of pet-keeping “rubbish.” Anthony believes that this idea is peculiarly American. He says that British and Australians rarely use the phrase when describing their relationship with pets. Anthony feels the unconditional love idea is demeaning to animals. He says that if we believe that our pets are programmed to mindlessly love us no matter what we do to them, they are essentially Cartesian robots that take whatever we dish out for them and then come back for more.

  I have to admit that the unconditional love idea appealed to me more when we lived with dogs. Now that we are a cat family, I’ve had to reconsider. I have come to the conclusion that while my love for her is unconditional, Tilly’s love for me is entirely conditional. She calls the shots. She loves me when I make her dinner or when she wants me to rub her belly or play a round of swat-Hal’s-feet. But most of the time, I’m just the guy who opens the window when she wants to go outside.

  CAN PETS MAKE US HAPPIER AND

  HEALTHIER? FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS

  The unconditional love theory does not completely explain why humans keep pets. There are other reasons for living with an animal besides the fact that it strokes your ego. Perhaps pets make us healthier and happier by providing social support or just someone to talk to. The pet industry certainly touts the medical and psychological benefits of living with cats and dogs. The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association claims that pet ownership lowers blood pressure, reduces stress, prevents heart disease, decreases doctor visits, and alleviates depression. By now, nearly everyone has heard that pets are good for you. Feel-good books like Paws & Effect: The Healing Power of Dogs by Sharon Sakon and The Healing Power of Pets: Harnessing the Amazing Ability of Pets to Make and Keep People Happy and Healthy by celebrity veterinarian Mart
y Becker make extraordinary claims about the magical healing power of animals. But it is the job of anthrozoologists to separate the hype from reality. Are these claims justified? And, if so, why are pets good for us?

  The most important publication in the short history of anthrozoology was a six-page article that appeared in the July 1980 issue of Public Health Reports. It was written by Erika Friedmann, who had just received her PhD in behavioral biology from the University of Pennsylvania. For her doctoral research, Erika investigated the role of social support in survival from heart attacks. She asked ninety-two patients in a coronary care unit to complete a survey concerning their socioeconomic status, living situation, and their connections with their friends and family. She also threw in an item asking whether they lived with a pet.

  Twelve months later, she tracked down the participants to see how they were doing. The big surprise was that owning a pet made a big difference in their survival rates. While 28% of the non–pet owners had died by the end of the year, only 6% of the pet owners were dead. Excited by these results, Erika presented them at a meeting of the American Heart Association. The cardiologists, however, basically yawned—though one did refer to her study as “cute.” The media were more interested. Her phone began to ring, and soon she was reading about herself in Reader’s Digest and Time. It was a good way to start a career. She was elected the first president of the International Society of Anthrozoology, and today she is a member of the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Nursing, where she continues to investigate the effects of pets on human health.

  Erika’s heart attack study inspired a flood of interest in the human-animal bond. A substantial body of research now supports the notion that pets can have beneficial effects on human health and well-being. Stroking an animal can cause a drop in blood pressure—even when the animal is a boa constrictor. In fact, just watching a video of tropical fish swimming in an aquarium can lower your blood pressure. Karen Allen, a bio-psychologist at the University at Buffalo, found that the blood pressure levels of adults skyrocketed when they had to solve complex mental arithmetic problems in front of their spouses, but barely went up at all when the audience was their pet.

  Other studies also provide support for the notion that pets are good for people. For example, children raised in homes with animals are less likely to suffer from asthma and miss fewer days of school because of illness. Elderly people who live with pets have lower levels of cholesterol and depression and elevated psychological well-being. A study of over 10,000 Germans and Australians found that the participants who lived with pets made fewer doctor visits than non–pet owners. Researchers from the University of Melbourne and from Beijing Normal University found that Chinese women who owned dogs slept more soundly, felt better, and took fewer sick days than a comparison group of non–pet owners. A study at the University of Missouri found that a dog-walking program increased the level of physical activity of the participants even outside the program. Some studies show that adults who are attached to animals are less lonely, and there is talk in some medical circles about prescribing dachshunds and Yorkies to old people.

  BUT…PETS ARE NOT PANACEAS

  It would be nice to think that getting a dog or cat would cure all your ills, but don’t throw out your Lipitor and Prozac just yet. Media reports on the miraculous healing powers of pets can be misleading. For example, an article in my local paper recently claimed researchers at the University of Missouri found that thirty cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy “considered their health to be improved” after four weekly visits with a hospital therapy dog. The paper got it wrong. First, there were only ten subjects in the pet therapy group; the other participants were in control groups that either quietly read a book during the sessions or talked to a person. More importantly, researchers actually reported that a dozen sessions with a therapy dog was no more beneficial to the cancer patients than reading a book. They concluded there was no association between the dog visits and the patients’ mood or perceived health.

  This is not the only study in which companion animals had no effect on human health. Deborah Wells, a psychologist at Queens University in Belfast, for example, examined the benefits of pet ownership on a group of people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. The pet owners did believe that living with an animal provided them with a wide range of psychological and physical benefits. But objective measures of their health and psychological well-being showed that the pet owners were just as tired, depressed, stressed, worried, and unhappy as the chronic fatigue suffers who did not live with a pet.

  The study I mentioned of 10,000 Germans and Australians found that owning a pet had no effect on people’s life satisfaction. And an attempt to replicate the boa constrictor blood pressure study failed to reproduce the findings of the original experiment. The effects of dog-walking on fitness are also unclear. The University of Missouri dog-walking study found that while the exercise program was enjoyable for the participants, it did not lower their blood pressure or cause them to lose weight. And a large New Zealand study reported that while new dog owners walked more, their total weekly allotment of physical activity actually went down after they got their pet. In fact, a study of 21,000 people in Finland found that pet owners had higher blood pressure and cholesterol levels than non–pet owners. The pet owners in the Finnish study were also more susceptible to kidney disease, arthritis, sciatica, migraines, depression, and panic attacks. And, while the Finnish pet owners did not smoke and drink as much as non–pet owners, they exercised less often and were more likely to be overweight.

  Researchers at the Australian National University found that adults between the ages of sixty and sixty-four who lived with a pet were more depressed, consumed more pain medications, and were in worse mental and physical shape than people without pets. Another study compared elderly people who regularly played with pets with a control group who rarely or never played with animals. The death rates in two groups were the same, and playing with pets made no difference in the participants’ health and sense of well-being. (The people who played with pets did, however, drink more alcohol.)

  Well, even if owning a pet won’t necessarily cure your ills, at least they will make you happier and less lonely, right? Not necessarily. A survey of 3,000 randomly selected American adults conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2006 found that dog owners, cat owners, and people who had no pets at all were equally likely to say they were “very happy” with their lives. Researchers at the University of Warwick in Great Britain examined the effects of acquiring a pet on loneliness in adults. Their subjects completed a psychological test that measured loneliness right after they got their new pet and again six months later. The results were clear: Living with an animal did not make the participants any less lonely.

  What are we to make of these disparate findings? Are pets good for people or aren’t they? Erika Friedmann recently tried to find out by carefully evaluating the results of thirty studies published between 1990 and 2007 on the effects of living with pets. She found that nineteen of the studies supported the pets-are-good-for-people hypothesis, but that ten of them found that pets had either no effects or had negative effects on human health and well-being. When I discussed these results with Erika, she said, “Yes, pets can be good for people.” Then she added, “But they are not panaceas.”

  WHY ARE PETS GOOD FOR (SOME) PEOPLE?

  So pet ownership does seem to make some, but not all, people feel healthier and happier, though perhaps not to the degree the pet industry would have you believe. The scientific question then becomes: Why do pets make a difference? There are three possibilities. The first is that pets don’t actually make people better off; the causal arrow might point in the other direction. That is, happier and healthier people could be more inclined to keep pets. Maybe they have more money and can afford an animal or perhaps they are in better shape and thus have the energy to take their dog for a walk. A second possibility is that pets do enhance their owners’ health an
d sense of well-being, because pets encourage people to socialize with other humans. For example, Deborah Wells has found that walking a dog facilitates conversations with strangers. The effect, however, depends on the type of dog. The Lab puppies in her study were great social lubricants; the adult rottweilers were not.

  The third possibility is that the human-animal bond does actually cause better health by providing social support. To prove this idea, researchers would have to conduct a randomized clinical trial. This involves assigning people who do not have a pet to either an experimental group that gets an animal, or a control group that does not. A randomized clinical trial can be difficult to pull off in the real world, but Karen Allen did it—with rich stockbrokers, no less.

  Her subjects were stressed-out Wall Street types who had high blood pressure. At the beginning of the study, all of the subjects were put on an antihypertension drug. Subjects in the experimental group also adopted a dog or cat from an animal shelter while the control group just got the drug. Six months later, Allen and her colleagues put the subjects in stressful situations; one involved a taking a difficult math test, the other giving a speech. The results were impressive. As expected, the blood pressure of all the subjects increased during the stress tests. However, blood pressure went up only half as much in the pet owners as in the drug-only group. Further, the beneficial effects of pets were greatest for the stockbrokers who had the fewest human friends. This experiment is the strongest evidence we have that the presence of an animal in a person’s life actually improves their cardiovascular functioning over long periods of time.

  PETS CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

  After hearing a stream of his economic advisors tell him, “On the one hand X is true, but on the other hand, Y is true,” Harry S. Truman is reported to have muttered in frustration, “Get me a one-armed economist.” Anthrozoology has the same problem.