Several scientific studies have shown that having a pet can keep older people physically fit, but little research has focused on the impact of dogs, cats and other pets on cognitive decline.
As people age, memory and brain capacity tend to deteriorate. For some, this accelerates over time, but it’s not a universal rule: in fact, some individuals maintain robust cognitive abilities even in old age.
A team of American researchers set out to determine whether pets, particularly dogs and cats, could help seniors age better, drawing on data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Ageing initiated in 1958.
This enabled them to analyse the results of cognitive tests carried out at regular intervals on 637 participants aged 50 and over. Among them, 185 volunteers had cats or dogs.
This study, published in Scientific Reports, revealed that cognitive decline was slower among pet owners. This was true even after taking into account the age of the participants and their state of health.
The researchers also found that dog owners who frequently walked their pooches saw their cognitive performance decline even more slowly than others.
This underlines just how beneficial walking your dog can be for your health. Previous studies have shown that dog walking not only enables owners to engage in regular physical activity, but also reduces social isolation, thus promoting psychological wellbeing.
The findings support the potential health benefits of our four-legged friends, as it “provides important longitudinal evidence for the contribution of pet ownership to the maintenance of cognitive function in generally healthy community-residing older adults as they age”.
“Older adult pet owners experienced less decline in cognitive function as they aged, after considering both their pre-existing health and age,” the study pointed out.
“Memory, executive and language function, psychomotor speed, and processing speed deteriorated less over 10 years among pet owners than among non-owners, and among dog owners than non-owners.”
While these findings are positive, they must be qualified: the study does not allow conclusions to be drawn from cause and effect, and involved individuals with a higher socioeconomic status and above-average cognitive abilities for their age.
But this does not detract from the fact that the benefits of animals on human mental and physical health are manifold, even if another recent report suggests that having pets does not make you happier.