Puppy love! Playing with dogs leads to a surge in the ‘love hormone’ in children, study finds

Letting your child play with the family dog could be beneficial for them both, a new study shows.

Scientists have found that kids get a burst of a beneficial hormone called oxytocin after fun interactions with canines. 

Oxytocin – which is produced in the hypothalamus in the brain and released into the bloodstream – is known to lower stress and anxiety and help humans express their emotions. 

The hormone was found at higher concentrations in children when they interacted with dogs, compared to playing on their own with toys and games. 

Of course, as with any interactions between dogs and small people, owners should keep a close eye on what's happening to prevent harrowing incidents. 

The new study was led by Gitanjali E. Gnanadesikan, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona's school of anthropology in Tucson.

‘To our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence for an effect of affiliative social interactions with dogs on oxytocin concentrations in children,' Gnanadesikan and colleagues say in their research paper, published in the journal Psycho-neuroendocrinology. 

For the study, the scientists recruited 55 children aged between 8 and 10 years of age for experiments at Tucson's Arizona Canine Cognition Center.

Over three separate visits, the children played with their pet dog, with an unfamiliar dog, and by themselves. 

Before, during and after the three play sessions, oxytocin levels were recorded in both the dogs and children, from saliva and urine samples. 

After analysing the results, Gnanadesikan and colleagues found that interaction with dogs led to higher oxytocin levels in children compared to solitary play. 

Both familiar and unfamiliar dog interactions had this oxytocin-boosting effect on children, the researchers report.

This suggests it doesn't matter if children play with their own dog or someone else's to get the beneficial hormone boost. 

As for the canines, the pet dogs showed increases in oxytocin in their saliva, whereas the team observed the opposite pattern in unfamiliar dogs. 

So the researchers think that interactions with children may also stimulate oxytocin release in dogs too, but only if the child is familiar to them. 

The team admit the child-dog interactions they observed in a lab setting ‘likely differ in important ways from those that occur in the home environment'. 

‘For example, it is unlikely that children or dogs were as comfortable in the unfamiliar laboratory environment as they would typically be at home,' they say in their paper. 

The experts used 35 mixed breeds and 19 pure breeds for their study, although they didn't specify exact breed types. 

But dog owners should always be very aware of any breed in the presence of children around the home, especially infants and babies.

What's more, the researchers used children between 8 and 10 years old, which is a relatively narrow age range.

Younger children with less capacity to look after themselves are especially vulnerable in the presence of dogs, especially without a watchful adult eye. 

Blue Cross says: ‘Children and dogs should not be left alone together without adult supervision.'