Nelson had Hardy. JFK had Jackie. Ant has Dec. But if you’re after a truly dependable companion, you may be best off with a dog.
That, at least, is the implication of a study which found that the emotional bonds owners share with their dogs outshine almost every kind of human relationship. The sole exception is the tie between parent and child.
More than 700 dog owners were asked to rate their relationships with their pets according to 13 criteria, including how much support, affection and loyalty they felt they derived from them. They also did the same for their relationships with four humans: a romantic partner, a best friend, a child and their “closest kin”.
The animals were rated, on average, as more affectionate than spouses, less annoying than relatives, and more steadfast in their loyalty than friends. As sources of companionship, they left romantic partners trailing. Overall, only children mounted a credible challenge to the dog-human bond — and even they barely managed to edge ahead.
The participants reported receiving more support from their dogs than from any human other than their offspring. When it came to negative interactions — sulking, squabbling, cold shoulders — dogs were surpassed only by best friends.
The study’s senior author, Professor Eniko Kubinyi, said dogs offer “the emotional closeness of a child, the ease of a best friend, and the predictability of a relationship shaped by human control”.
Romantic relationships failed to measure up to pets as a source of companionship
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That control, Kubinyi and her ethology colleagues at Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary believe, is probably key. The dog-owner dynamic, they suggest, is less a partnership of equals than a kind of benevolent dictatorship. While relationships between humans involve negotiation and compromise, a well-adjusted dog will offer predictable affection, reliable loyalty and minimal dissent. They do not tend to hold grudges, interrupt your stories, or question your taste in television.
“Unlike in human relationships, dog owners maintain full control over their dogs as they make most of the decisions,” Kubinyi said. “The power asymmetry … is a fundamental aspect of dog ownership for many.”
The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, also challenged the researchers’ presumption that dog owners would rely on their pets to compensate for a lack of human connection. “We expected that people with weak human relationships would rely more on their dogs for support, but our results contradict this,” said Dorottya Ujfalussy, co-author of the paper.
On the contrary, those who had stronger bonds with other humans also tended to have more robust relationships with their pets.
“In our sample, people did not seem to use dogs to compensate for the insufficient support in their human relationships,” Ujfalussy said. It seems dogs do not fill emotional voids; they enhance already well-stocked emotional portfolios.
Rather than viewing dogs as proxies for children or partners, the researchers propose a more nuanced view. The emotional role a dog plays, they argue, depends less on the animal than on the person who looks after them. “Dogs offer different kinds of emotional and social support depending on the needs of their owners,” said Dr Borbala Turcsan, the study’s lead author.
“Some people seek companionship and fun, others need trust and stability, and some simply enjoy having someone to care for.”
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