Are children and dogs best friends? A scoping review to explore the positive and negative effects of child-dog interactions.

ABSTRACT: Personal wellbeing is greatly influenced by our childhood and adolescence, and the relationships formed during those phases of our development. The human-dog bond represents a significant relationship that started thousands of years ago. There is a higher prevalence of dog ownership around the world, especially in households including children. This has resulted in a growing number of researchers studying our interactions with dogs and an expanding evidence base from the exploration of child-dog interactions. We review the potential effects of child-dog interactions on the physical, mental, and social wellbeing of both species. A search of the SCOPUS database identified documents published between January 1980 and April 2022. Filtering for key inclusion criteria, duplicate removals, and in

SUBMITTER: Giraudet CSE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9774011 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature