By: Nina He

I’m sure anyone can recognize the phrase a man’s best friend. But how did they get the name? Well, dogs are cute, sweet, adorable, forgives easily, are loyal, don’t hold grudges, and are, most recently, helpful.

Research has proved that hanging out with a dog can help improve your health and happiness by giving us higher levels of oxytocin, also known as the love hormone.

Nancy Gee, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Centre for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States said that connecting with a dog can help lower the stress hormone and raise the love hormone at the same time.

“Dogs really can connect with another human being. And they do it in a very unassuming way,” Professor Gee said. And another good thing is that a dog interacting with a human can also help their happiness. “We see the same thing in the dogs, so the dogs’ oxytocin also increases when they interact with a human.”

Think about your little golden retriever with a big smile on his or her face, running in the grass, their long, golden fur blowing in the wind. It’s a win-win for both the dog and the human!

A study on eight and nine year olds interacting with pooches, a type of dog, twice a week helped their thinking and reasoning, while also reducing their stress and raising their focus levels.

“We actually saw (those effects) one month later. And there’s some evidence that (they) may exist six months later,” Professor Gee said.

Megan Mueller, an associate professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, said that dogs can help us experience the world in their way.

“Animals, and dogs in particular, live in the moment. They’re experiencing their environment with wonder and awe all the time, and they’re not bringing up what happened to them earlier in the day or what they’re thinking about in the future. They’re there right now,” said Associate Professor Mueller. “They sort of pull you out of your phone and into whatever environment that you’re in.”

Associate Professor Mueller also said that actually physically petting or touching a dog might also help.

A study in Canada showed that the university students who were next to dogs said that they had less stress and homesickness after short interactions with dogs. And when the students actually touched dogs, the effect was much bigger.

Dogs can help people who are feeling sad feel much happier. After all, they aren’t called a man’s best friend for nothing!