What if your dog was a reflection of your emotions? Does your pet feel your stress or share your calm? If so, it’s not just a coincidence: a British study confirms that your emotional state can directly influence your faithful friend, right down to their heartbeat.

A research team from Queen’s University Belfast came to this conclusion after conducting an experiment in which 28 dog owners were fitted with heart monitors while subjected to potentially stressful situations, such as a digital test – or calming ones, such as a guided meditation session.

At the same time, the researchers monitored their dogs’ heartbeats for possible correlations between human and canine emotions.

As expected, participants reported a significant increase in stress after the digital test, followed by a noticeable decrease after the meditation. But what particularly caught the researchers’ attention was that variations in the owners’ heart rates seemed to precede those of their dogs.

In other words, the stress or serenity of the owners seemed to literally go straight to the heart of their companions.

For Dr Gareth Arnott, a specialist in animal behaviour and co-author of the study, the results suggest that dogs may be susceptible to emotional contagion. This phenomenon, well known in humans, translates into the unconscious mirroring of emotions through expressions, voice or even posture.

So, whether positive or negative, emotions can influence those around us – dogs included. “This has significant implications for managing canine stress in veterinary settings, as it provides evidence to suggest that owners’ stress may influence the stress of their dogs,” Arnott explained.

As Arnott and his colleagues point out in the study published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 60% of dogs are frightened when they arrive at a veterinary practice – a reaction that could, in part, be due to the attitude of their owners.

“If vets help owners feel more calm while attending the clinic, it could help their dogs feel more at ease, too,” the researchers concluded in an article published on The Conversation website.

So if you wish to appease your four-legged friend in a stressful situation, start by calming yourself down. Dogs have a remarkable ability to adapt to new environments: their heart rate slows over time, provided they are given the space they need to acclimatise.