Do you feel bad that your dog spends his days home alone when you are working at the office? Are you conflicted about forcing your cat to spend her life indoors 24/7 when you know she aches to be outdoors? If so, you are not alone. In a 2021 public opinion poll, over half of respondents admitted that they experienced guilt.
HAL HERZOG: Did your heart ever break when you dropped your dog off at a boarding kennel as you headed off for a week at the beach? Do you feel bad that your pandemic puppy now spends her days alone because your boss insists you return to working back at the office? Are you conflicted about forcing your cat to spend her life indoors 24/7 when you know she aches to be outdoors chasing mice and small birds? If so, you are not alone. In a 2021 public opinion poll, over half of respondents admitted that they experienced pet owner guilt…
Surprisingly, given its frequency and mental health consequences, with the exception of euthanasia, until recently there has been no research on guilt in pet owners. In 2022, a team led by Dr. Lori Kogan at Colorado State University published the results of the first investigation of pet-related guilt in the journal Animals.
Eighty-five percent of dog owners in the United States and 75 percent of cat owners consider their pets to be family members. Thus the researchers reasoned that pet-related guilt would be similar to guilt experienced by parents of human children—especially as related to the conflicts between child-rearing and work.
Dr. Kogan’s research team recruited 592 American dog owners through a commercial source of research subjects… , the participants answered questions about their attachment to their dogs and how they dealt with their dog-related guilt…
Even though the study’s recruiting description did not mention guilt, every participant admitted they experienced some form of guilt related to their canine companions. The researchers used a statistical technique called factor analysis to extract the main categories of the causes of dog-related guilt. The most important were:
– Being away from home (Sample item: “I feel guilty when I go to work.”)
– Insufficient time/attention for pets (Sample item: “I feel guilty when I am too tired to pay attention to my dog.”)
– Pets’ physical health (Sample item: “I feel guilty when I do not run with my dog.”)
– Leaving pets alone (Sample item: “I feel guilty when I leave my dog alone.”)
Further, as the researchers predicted, there were similarities between pet owner guilt and parental guilt. For example, a third of participants significantly struggled with guilt stemming from conflicts between the demands of dog ownership and their occupations. This was especially true of the men in the study and dog owners younger than 50.
Most of the participants reported changing their behaviors or ways of thinking about pets to help them cope with dog-related guilt. Nearly half of the subjects said they sometimes decline to participate in social events because they felt guilty leaving their dog, and a third of them admitted that, because of guilt, they spent time with their dog at the expense of other family members. Three of four said that reminding themselves their dog has a good life helped them deal with their guilt, and 40 percent were simply resigned to feeling guilty about living with a dog…
In 2023, Dr. Kogan’s research team published a follow-up study of pet-owner guilt. In addition to replicating the results of their first study, they examined the relationship between pet guilt, depression, and anxiety. The subjects in the study were 613 adult dog owners, equally divided between men and women. They completed a 20-item standardized depression inventory and a 21-item anxiety scale as well as the pet owner guilt measures.
The results of this research were consistent with the findings of their 2022 study. Further, as the investigators predicted, individuals with higher guilt about dog parenting tended to have higher anxiety and depression scores. This finding was also true of individuals who experienced guilt related to conflicts between the demands of their jobs and pet parenting. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: