Dogs offer humans 'more satisfying relationships' than their best friends

A new study has found that dog owners can get more satisfying relationships from their pets than their best friends.

Dogs are affectionately known as “man’s best friend”, and it seems there's plenty of truth to it after a study of 717 people revealed the huge role dogs play in their owners’ lives.

They found that dog owners rated their relationships with their dogs as being as satisfying, or more satisfying, than their closest human relationships.

“Our results showed that it [the bond] does not replace human relationships but offers something different, a unique combination of characteristics to complement what we receive from the human side of our social network,” Borbála Turcsán, an author of the study from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, explained.

Interestingly, however, their findings did not show that the owner-pet bond was stronger in those than in people who have weaker quality human relationships.

The study, published in the Scientific Reports journal, explained how the research team used social media to recruit 717 participants, over two periods between April 2011 to February 2013 and January 2022 to December 2023.

Of them, around 80 per cent had a romantic partner and 20 per cent had children.

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Researchers asked the participants to rate their relationship with their pet, child, partner, closest relative and best friend. They were rated across 13 characteristics, which included factors such as reliability, intimacy, companionship, power balance and satisfaction.

They were also asked questions about how often they had fun time with them, how often they protected and looked after the individual, how much they argued, and how much they go on their nerves, who was more dominant, and how sure they were the relationship would last.

According to the results, dogs were rated higher by their owners for companionship and requiring nurture from them than their closest relative, best friend and romantic partners.

They were also rated higher than best friends in areas including affection, reliability and support.

Professor Enikő Kubinyi, the study’s senior author, explained: “Dogs offer a highly positive relationship with minimal conflict, strong social support, and the unique opportunity to have full control over another living being’s life.”

While the relationship between dog owner and pet was found to be most similar to that of a parent and a child, dogs had lower levels of conflict with their owners.

The researchers say the results highlight the many important relationships that dogs and pets can play in the lives of their owners.

“A dog can be a playmate for children, a good flatmate, best friend for young singles, a surrogate child for young couples, a sibling figure once children arrive, a grandchild for ‘empty-nester’ parents, and perhaps the most important source of social support for elderly people living alone,” Kubinyi said.

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