The Emotional Impact of Changing Owners on a Pet
Any dog will find adjustment very difficult. Whether it is good for them or not, many of them miss their old owner and take time to adapt to a new one.
All the models took into account the necessary confounders to assess the true effects of pet ownership on stress and loneliness; however, interaction between stage of the study and pet ownership group did not achieve statistical significance.
The Trauma
When one uses the term trauma, it indicates that the person has been through some sort of emotional disturbance that is beyond processing and basically penetrates into the very being, rendering the person incapacitated to a fair extent in dealing with life and instead puts them in survival mode. Trauma victims can be those who have gone through physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, traumatic loss, accidents, or natural calamities, such events becoming intolerable even for the strongest of spirits. Afterward, the innocent victim is left with no one for comfort except their faithful furry companions.
The presence of their pets is said to increase heart rate variability, decrease cortisol levels, and in releasing oxytocin (bonding hormone) reassure the survivors back to safety and the knowledgeable feeling that they are safe to love and care for someone regardless of whether culpable; the loss of someone dear to them will reawaken the immunologically-protected trauma.
Recent studies have shown a strong relationship between traumatic grief and childhood trauma experiences, controlling all covariables. The 137 participants filled in an online questionnaire with demographic questions and pet ownership details. Participants were categorized into two groups based on their pets' death happening within a year after or beyond the year of adoption; both groups were then subjected to the Inventory of Complicated Grief, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, and Insomnia Severity Index questionnaires to assist comparison in results.
On the one hand, the trauma-generating death of a pet and childhood trauma being present was significantly associated with complicated grief, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and insomnia, while the absence of these conditions tended to be protective factors. Its mediation analysis modeled and displayed cross-sectional associations between variables but does not tell cause. So, the way forward is to prospectively study the possible moderating impact of human attachment styles on trauma grief burden and mental health burden.
Being Patient
For their emotional well-being, a new dog must have a patient and understanding owner. The first few months will probably be especially challenging for any dog, as it learns to adjust to its new environment, people, and routines; trust will develop slowly, inch by inch, among the caregivers of the dogs. This is especially true in cases involving previous ownership changes or trauma.
Being patient is something that can be learned. You learn to be patient by dealing with all sorts of nonsense, from the mundane (like an airline delay, or in a snarl of traffic, or on hold for 45 minutes) to the more somber situations that demand all of your patience, such as a treacherous relationship or a dysfunctional workplace.
At times of increased anxiety and stress, pets offer comforting and reliable companionship to their owners, bringing stability and security. Pets offer subjective perception and positives psychological effects to their owners that tremendously help ease insomnia, oversleeping, anxiety, depression, fatigue, lack of interest, and worries about COVID-19 infection, according to our study. Our study also revealed that early behavioral changes of pet owners towards their pets can help alleviate their own symptoms. This mediation model was used further to assess the relationship between emotional attachment to their pets and mental health; it was found to be mediated by the psychological comfort and sense of belongingness provided by social networks.
Stability Is Important
Animals give humans the love that is sometimes not found between humans, in moments of turmoil and uncertainty; hence their role is pivotal in maintaining emotional balance.
Studies have looked at dogs in the company of people suffering from mental disorders and have shown that these dogs tend to engage in overall higher levels of subjective well-being than dogs kept by those not having pets. This might be due to the very fact that pets provide owners with security and a sense of routine to cope with symptomatology associated with mental illnesses.
Even though emotional attachment to pets might correlate with mental health outcomes, their interpretation should be approached with caution. Whereas research on human attachment categorizes them in terms of categories like secure, anxious, or avoidant attachment, most studies on pet ownership in emotional states utilize the strength-based unidimensional assessment approach while assessing emotional bonds between owners and their respective pets.
Behavioral Changes
With the emotional transfer effect, humans can spread their set of feelings to their pets, which may come into consideration why dogs would do so to their human counterparts, more like the ones afore-mentioned, even upon short times apart from each other. But humans do this too; the effect goes both ways.
Think about how the owner's emotional repercussions surrounding the changing of owners will impair the well-being of the pet. This is even more significant in the case of erratic mental health themselves-the caretakers tend to develop unreliable or unstable relationships anyway and become ill attuned to the needs of their pets, often resulting in breakdowns in the relationship and that wellbeing which invariably leads to relinquishment.
Evidence from various studies explore how pets can also improve the social and physical well-being of their owners, which enhances their quality of life, reduces depressive symptoms, or lower levels of stress.
