People with Pet Allergies Refuse to Give Up Their Pets

There seems to be a lot more discussion about allergies to dogs and cats in recent days. It is likely that this is in part due to the fact that in his victory speech President Elect Barack Obama announced that he would be getting his daughters a dog however that dog must be "hypoallergenic" because his daughter Malia is allergic to animal dander. This set me to thinking about the number of people who are allergic to dogs or cats but insist on keeping them anyway.

A few years ago I did some research that bears on this question and was published in the British Medical Journal. I was interested in the fact that it is often the case that physicians suggest life-style changes to their patients as part of their treatment program. Such changes are particularly important when confronted with certain conditions, such as controlling exposure to known or environmental conditions that will trigger an allergic response in an individual. It frustrates many physicians when they find that a good number of their patients fail to comply with their instructions.

As a psychologist this failure to comply with their doctor's recommendations can be understood especially when there are emotional consequences to making the asked for life-style changes. To me one particularly interesting example of this type involves pet ownership by individuals who are known to have allergies to substances such as animal fur, saliva or dander.

Because of this interest of mine, during the course of a larger study on health consequences of life-style, I managed to isolate a sample of 341 adults who had been diagnosed as being allergic to dogs or cats. Their average age was around 38 years. The reason why this group of people were interesting is that all of them owned pets (dogs or cats) and had been diagnosed as having pet allergies which were severe enough that their doctors had specifically advised them to stop sharing their living quarters with their pets.

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Given the emotional bond that people develop with their pets I expected that a good number of these people would not go along with their doctor's request. Even starting with that expectation I was surprised as to how few actually did. The proportion of individuals complying with their doctors instructions to remove their pets was extremely low. Only 21.4% (a bit more than one out of every five people) actually rid themselves of pets or stopped allowing them inside of their homes. Such a low level of compliance might be explained by the fact that there is a large emotional investment in a currently owned pet. A pet dog or cat is often viewed as equivalent to a family member. This would suggest that many of the people who did not follow their doctor's instructions were probably adopting a strategy much like "Let's keep Lassie or Fluffy for as long as they live, but let's not get another dog or cat after they are gone in order to control my allergies."

That kind of expectation underestimates the importance of pets in the lives of many people. Once you have owned a dog or a cat that you have bonded with, the idea that they will pass on and you will not have another to keep you company in unthinkable to many people. This was confirmed in my data. In my sample of participants I found a subset of 122 individuals for whom the diagnosis of a pet allergy had been made sufficiently long ago that the animal they were living with at the time had, by now, died. In this group, despite the presence of pet allergies and the advice of their physician, an amazing 70.5% (more than two out of every three patients) had actually replaced the deceased animal with a new dog or cat.

These results are quite striking. Apparently pets are sufficiently important to the life-style of many individuals that they are willing to ignore both chronic allergic symptoms and specific medical advice in order to continue to live with them. The emotional gain from the companionship associated with living with a pet is clearly sufficient to offset the continued physical discomfort caused by continued allergic reactions.

As the poet Lord Byron wrote of dog ownership (but which also could be endorsed by cat owners) "Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come"-even if sneezing and a runny nose accompany that look of recognition and love from our four-footed family members.

Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History: Dogs and the Course of Human Events, How Dogs Think : Understanding the Canine Mind, How To Speak Dog, Why We Love the Dogs We Do, What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs, Sleep Thieves, The Left-hander Syndrome.

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