I’ve found the ultimate science-backed health and longevity hack – owning a dog

It’s Sunday. A lie-in would be lovely, but my taskmaster makes it clear this is off the table. Despite driving rain, he drags me to the park and orders me to start racking up the miles, barking instructions throughout. After an hour, it’s time to head home, but there is no time to crash on the sofa. Instead, I’m herded straight to the kitchen to refuel, all before most people have opened their eyes.

Oh no, I don’t have a personal trainer – I just own a dog.

The odd thing is, while the extra hours in bed might have felt like a luxury at the time, I do feel better for having been on this wet weather walk.

My actions are also unconsciously aligned with a litany of health hacks promoted by self-optimising podcast hosts – from walking x number of steps per day to keeping a consistent routine to accessing sunlight shortly after waking.

This got me thinking: with so many people spending heavily on supplements and trying to streamline every aspect of their life for improved productivity, is owning a dog the ultimate health hack?

Subjectively speaking, a lot of good in my life can be traced back to my four-year-old cavachon, Archie. Lunchtimes, which might otherwise be spent doomscrolling, are instead filled with a walk in nature, his company is always appreciated while I’m working from home, and I can guarantee he’ll do at least one bizarre thing each day to make me laugh.

However, I am just one person, and as a fitness writer, I’m a fairly active one at that. For this reason, I reached out to Matthew Ahmadi, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney’s School of Health Sciences, to find out if the benefits I had experienced were applicable to all.

Ahmadi led a randomised control trial, published in the BMC Research Notes journal last year, which set out to explore whether placing activity trackers on dogs might motivate owners to move more. And while Covid lockdowns during the testing period skewed results, his team’s wider research uncovered some interesting insights.

Dogs need regular movement to be healthy. So, too, do humans, but we’re more likely to exercise if we’re held accountable. Dogs do just that, and to my mind, this is the foundational benefit to owning a dog: you’re encouraged to move more.

“People who own dogs tend to be a little bit more active than those who do not; when your dog needs to go on a walk, you also have to go on that walk,” says Ahmadi.

“One important factor in this is dog breed. Certain breeds are very active, requiring three walks or 90 minutes of exercise per day, whereas other breeds are, for lack of a better term, couch potatoes. But we know that owning an active dog does help to increase overall activity.”

This is something I’ve both seen and experienced. My fitness tracker usually tells me I’ve covered 10km-plus at the end of each day, with most of this distance accumulating during dog walks. When I pitched this idea for a feature, a colleague also revealed their father’s stratospheric daily step count. His secret? Dog walks and golf.

Family members have also lost a significant amount of weight after adopting dogs, with one shedding over a stone after they started “walking five miles per day and eating a few less crumpets” – more movement leads to greater daily energy expenditure, consistently eating a bit less leads to lower calorie consumption, and the net result may create a calorie deficit, which is helpful if weight management is your goal.

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“We know from previous research that our team has done around total daily steps [found here in the British Journal of Sports Medicine] that just increasing your total activity levels can improve your overall health and go a long way to lowering your risk of cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancers,” Ahmadi says.

Overall health, he adds, encompasses everything from improved longevity and lower risk of disease to increased quality of life. This can be achieved through factors such as improved heart and lung function and better mobility, which come as a consequence of walking, or generally moving, more.

If, in most cases, owning a dog encourages you to move more, and moving more has a plethora of associated health perks, then the list of potential benefits to having a canine companion keeps growing.

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From a biomechanical point of view, I believe owning a dog can be incredibly positive. The body adheres to the SAID principle, which stands for specific adaptation to imposed demand; put simply, the body adapts to get better at the things we consistently ask it to do.

Paired with a sedentary lifestyle, this mechanism can be detrimental. When we sit down all day, the body adapts to get better at sitting down all day – this includes adaptations such as tightening our hip flexors so we can hold them in that shortened seated position more easily, leading to potential pain, dysfunction and compensation elsewhere in the body.

Regular, varied movement combats this, requiring you to assume many different positions and reminding the body to maintain the mobility needed to access them – you might be familiar with the phrase “motion is lotion”. When you think about bending over to pet your dog, lunging down to pick up their ball or twisting round to call them, these all echo functional movements you will want to be able to do pain-free for as long as possible.

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As a dog owner, the most obvious subjective statement I can make is that spending time with my dog makes me incredibly happy.

Several studies have linked the dog-human bond with increased release of oxytocin – a hormone linked to bonding and positive emotional states.

“Having that companion by your side can lead to this,” Ahmadi says. “But there’s a social interaction component as well, not only with the pet itself, but also with the other dog owners you meet at the park. So that human interaction also becomes a benefit of having a dog.”

For this reason, owning a dog could not only help improve physical health but also boost mental health by helping to combat loneliness.

“I tend to liken loneliness to being hungry or thirsty,” says Professor Andrea Wigfield, co-director of the Campaign to End Loneliness and a leading researcher on the topic. “Social interaction is an essential thing, and as a human being, you need people around you.”

She describes the process of preventing or easing loneliness as “creating meaningful relationships” – connections with other people, yourself and spaces around you.

From my experience, regularly chatting to now-familiar fellow dog walkers at the park around the corner from my house, a stroll with Archie ticks at least two of these three boxes.

Read more: The important thing your exercise plan is probably missing – particularly if you’re older

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My dog operates like clockwork. He sleeps under my desk while I’m working from home, then nudges my feet when it’s time for his regular walks and feeds.

Even when the clocks go forward and back, he manages to do this with unerring accuracy, temporally speaking. He is like an alarm clock in the morning too, pawing at my door if I dare to attempt a slower start to the day.

I can’t say I don’t grumble when he does this, but it does help me stick to a semi-regular routine, and this has been linked with a series of health benefits.

First and foremost among them is its ability to regulate your circadian rhythm – your in-built body clock, which is wired into pretty much every system in the body. When you have a regular routine, with consistent sleep-wake cycles, these processes are able to sync up and run smoothly, leading to improved sleep, energy levels and general functioning.

Prolific health podcaster and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman is also a big proponent of accessing sunlight early in the day – something an AM dog walk is sure to deliver.

“I consider viewing morning sunlight in the top five of all actions that support mental health, physical health and performance,” he writes.

Perhaps my dog has my best interests at heart when he wakes me up at 6am, or perhaps he is just bored? Either way, it would appear both of us are reaping the rewards from our early starts.

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On the whole, owning a dog makes you move more – in many cases, significantly so. But what it doesn’t tend to do is increase the amount of more intense physical activity you do each week, Ahmadi says.

“We actually don’t see too much of a change in the intensity levels of people’s movement, and by this I mean the time you spend moving at a moderate-to-vigorous intensity,” he explains. “That’s because, when you go for a walk with your dog, the dog will typically walk for a few minutes then stop and sniff something, or you might throw the ball for your dog at the park, so they are running while you are standing still.”

This, I can relate to – I spend a significant chunk of each dog walk standing next to intriguing tree stumps with standout aromas. But this behaviour also represents a flaw in my argument for dogs acting as a catalyst to better health: it is higher-intensity movement that delivers the most efficient way to experience physical benefits, according to Ahmadi’s University of Sydney colleague Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis.

“Vigorous-intensity physical activity… is by far the most time-efficient form [of activity for achieving various health benefits],” he explains. “It is the ‘physiological language’ the body best understands – the extra effort acts as a signal for the body to make adaptations and improvements in, say, how the heart functions or how the body absorbs and transports oxygen to the muscles.

“For these beneficial health adaptations to happen, the body needs to be pushed regularly, even if it is for a short period of time under one minute.”

If you have the time, pairing the foundational movement provided by dog walks with more intense formal exercise throughout the week provides a potent cocktail for health and fitness gains. Strength training in particular holds added perks for building a strong, robust body.

If you don’t have any extra time available, Ahmadi says there are ways to weave more intense activity into your pre-existing dog walks.

“When you’re walking your dog, either going somewhere hilly or including short bursts of walking at a faster pace can go a long way,” he says. “By doing this, not only are you increasing your total daily steps, but you are also increasing the amount of higher-intensity activity you are doing.

“If your dog needs to go out two or three times per day, and you manage to do a few seconds [of higher-intensity movement] here and there in each of these walks, by the end of the day you might have done eight to 12 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity.”

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There is a decent amount of scientific research to support my hypothesis that owning a dog holds plenty of health perks. A 2008 study published in the American Journal of Public Health surveyed 1,813 US adults, and found that although only 23 per cent of dog owners walked their dogs five or more times per week, “dog owners completed significantly more minutes and sessions of walking and more minutes of total physical activity”.

A 2017 systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Heart Association Journals adds that dog ownership has been associated with “lower blood pressure levels, improved lipid profile, and diminished sympathetic responses to stress”. Given my dog’s propensity for mischief, I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at that final point.

The review concludes: “Dog ownership is associated with lower risk of death over the long term, which is possibly driven by a reduction in cardiovascular mortality.”

Further 2019 research found that dog walkers walk faster, walk more (an extra 22 minutes or 2,760 steps per day, on average) and have fewer continuous periods of sitting per day than those without a four-legged friend.

Meanwhile, another 2019 study published in the Animals journal reported how positive dog-human interactions have been linked to a surge in oxytocin – “a hormone which has been linked to positive emotional states”.

This rationale prompted running brand ASICS to launch its own global research – Mind’s Best Friend – into the effectiveness of employing man’s best friend as your new fitness coach. The results were so persuasive that the brand promptly enlisted Felix the Samoyed (pictured below) as an ambassador.

ASICS’ survey found that eight in 10 British owners feel less stressed after moving with their dogs, 69 per cent say their dog is their main motivator to move, and as a result, they are 35 per cent more likely to meet recommended physical activity guidelines than non-dog owners.

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Despite the many apparent health perks available from getting a dog, this article can’t be taken as an open invitation, or recommendation, to do so.

Owning a dog is a considerable commitment, and for some people it will not be the right move – both for them and their prospective pet.

“Despite the numerous health and wellbeing benefits to owning a dog, getting a pet is a huge financial and time commitment – it should never be taken lightly or impulsively,” says Nathalie Ingham, canine behaviourist and training manager at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

“We advise anyone considering taking on the responsibility of a canine companion to do their research, understand that it’s a long-term commitment, and make sure their lifestyle is compatible with the care and time that dogs require. There are a number of resources available on the Battersea website that can help potential owners understand whether getting a dog is the right decision for them."

This said, there appears to be a strong case to be made for dog walkers leading more active, social lives than the average person. Several mental and physical health benefits may stem from this; increased heart health, better mobility, improved mental health and boosted longevity, to name a few.

So, next time you’re considering trying a trendy new exercise or buying a pricey new piece of fitness equipment that promises the earth, it might be worth taking the dog for a walk first.

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