Dog owners who get home and start moaning about a hard day at work could be making their pets depressed, a study has found.
It revealed that dogs showed more signs of stress-related behaviour when they are exposed to owners’ workplace woes.
US scientists who carried out the research insisted dog owners should avoid bringing home their problems in order to ‘protect the well-being of man’s best friend’.
Work-related stress affects an estimated 700,000 people a year in the UK, with an estimated 16 million working days lost each year as a result. The study, by a team of psychologists from Radford University in Virginia, set out to establish if family dogs are also affected.
They recruited 85 adults who had a dog and asked them to monitor their pets’ behaviour on days when they came home stressed, as compared to days off or less-stressful shifts. Owners were told to look for signs that their dogs were unhappy, which include excessive whimpering and poor appetite.
