When a Doctor Says “The Dog Must Go," Do People Comply?

Source: Pexels / Andrea Piacquadio

Generally speaking, the scientific data suggests that dogs are good for you. The psychological data is clear with many studies suggesting, for instance, that living with a dog can improve mental health and stave off the cognitive decline associated with aging. There are also positive physiological effects, in that dogs reduce the likelihood of diseases related to stress; a task force of the American Heart Association reported that owning a dog may protect you from heart disease.

A Potential Problem With Pet Ownership

However, there is a possible physiological downside to owning dogs. A study in the United States found that 11.8% of the population showed some allergic sensitivity to dogs, or at least to some of the molecular components one might inhale when sharing a home with a dog. The symptoms may simply be in the form of mild respiratory difficulties, such as sneezing, runny nose, and watery eyes, but in some individuals, problems can ramp up to include asthmatic symptoms, like bouts of coughing and shortness of breath.

If the symptoms are severe enough, a medical practitioner may recommend that the dog owner remove the pet dog from their home. Many doctors seem to view this as a simple lifestyle decision, like asking people to exercise more or eat fewer carbohydrates. Such doctors often seem to be unaware of or unresponsive to the deep emotional bond that a person might have with their pet. Because of this, when the patient fails to obey their medical edict, physicians often become frustrated and offended.

A Personal Experience

I have been on the receiving end of this scenario. When I learned that I have respiratory allergies to dogs and dust — and of course the former drag a lot of the latter into the house — I went through five years of treatment involving frequent shots of a serum in an attempt to desensitize me to these allergens. While there was some small improvement, the symptoms persisted to the degree that the allergist insisted that I get rid of my dog. But I refused to live without my canine companion, to my doctor's dismay. As a result, I continue to share my house with my dog, putting up with a runny nose, occasional bouts of coughing, and the necessity of continual doses of antihistamines to keep things in check.

Is This Defiance a Common Pattern?

A number of years ago, perhaps motivated by my own history, I did some research to look at how many people who are allergic to dogs insist on keeping them anyway — despite medical advice to the contrary. I took the opportunity to collect some data during the course of a much larger study on the health consequences of particular lifestyles. From that data set I managed to extract a sample of 341 adults who had been identified as being allergic to dogs. Their average age was around 38. To be included in this data set, individuals had to have been diagnosed as having allergies which were severe enough that their doctors had specifically advised them to divest themselves of any dogs that currently lived in their homes.

As a psychologist I know the strength of the emotional bond that people develop with their dogs and so I expected that a good number of these people would not go along with their doctor’s advice. However, I was still surprised to find how few people actually complied. The percentage of individuals who followed their doctor’s instructions to remove their dogs from their homes was unexpectedly low; only 21.4% actually got rid of their dogs or stopped allowing them inside.

After a Dog's Death, Taking in New Companions in Defiance of Symptoms

Given our loving emotions for our dogs it seems reasonable to think that many patients who don’t comply with their doctor’s instructions are probably thinking something like “I’ll just keep Rover for his life span but when he passes, in order to control my allergies, I won’t get another dog.” However, the data revealed that the strength of their feelings for dogs goes deeper. It appears that, for the majority of people in my sample, the idea that after their current pet passes away, they might not be able to have another dog in their life was too painful to accept, regardless of their allergies. This was established when I analyzed a subset of 122 individuals for whom the diagnosis of a dog allergy had been made sufficiently long ago so that the dog that they were living with at the time their allergies were discovered had, by then, died. For this group, despite the advice of their doctors and the continuation of their dog allergies, the data showed that 70.5% actually got another dog to replace their deceased pet!

This data set demonstrates, perhaps more clearly than any other evidence I know of, the strength of the human-canine bond. It seems to show that dogs are so loved that people are willing to ignore both chronic allergic symptoms and the specific medical instructions of physicians in order to continue to live with them. It seems that while sharing a home with a dog may aggravate some allergies, dogs are a cure for loneliness and provide a constant flow of affection which, for a lot of people, more than offsets the physical discomfort of a stuffy nose or an occasional bout of coughing.

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