The Virginia Commonwealth University Dogs On Call therapy dogs know a lot about love and affection — they spend their days warming the hearts of patients, visitors, students, faculty and staff. The highly trained fuzzballs, along with their human handlers, visit the VCU Medical Center and other VCU Health clinical facilities as well as student events on campus to spread their love and calming presence to anyone who needs a feel-good moment.

“What we found is that the special needs students secreted less cortisol when they interacted with the dog than in the yoga relaxation or in the classroom as usual condition,” Gee says. “That bore itself out over the course of the semester. ... As the semester goes on, children get more and more stressed. And that didn’t happen in the dog condition.”

At the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, the pitter-patter of paws coming down the hallway creates an atmosphere of excitement among patients, visitors and staff. These four-legged guests stop by weekly courtesy of the nonprofit Center for Human-Animal Interaction.

Pet ownership or human–animal interaction has been associated with better health outcomes in individuals with disease or disability. We hypothesized that pet ownership, as well as dog ownership and cat ownership separately, are associated with maintaining physical function, and leisure time physical activity and that among dog owners, dog walking is associated with maintaining these outcomes for generally healthy community-dwelling older adults participating in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging.

Nancy Gee is Director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University.  She's studying how therapeutic relationships between dogs and humans can have actual health benefits.