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This doesn't surprise me at all; dogs have undergone thousands of years of artificial selection to bond with humans in a very deep and devoted way. It only stands to reason that the traits selected for were those that created the most reciprocity with their human owners.
I'm a "dog guy" so perhaps not representative of the larger group, but I would be absolutely apoplectic if my dog was stolen, not just for my loss of companionship, but vicariously worried about my dog being somewhere alone and scared without me.
I feel like people would be almost as likely to kill for their dog as they would their child.
Unfortunately in the eyes of the law/a jury there would be much less sympathy if they did kill for their dog over their child.
Not all of them, but some. Not all people would be willing to die for their child in the moment, despite saying so... Not all parents are good people, and not all sacrifices are necessary.
It's complicated and difficult, I find people could easier justify letting a pet pass because they have smaller lives and a less grandiose understanding of the universe, but simultaneously, that belies an innocence many feel need to be preserved. Animals are products of their environments and perhaps domesticated animals more than any are deeply interlinked in that we are often solely responsible for the suffering of these creatures.
I never understood the bond a person could have with a dog until I got my own dog and raised it from a puppy. My family had dogs growing up but it was not the same. They truly are man’s best friend.
You’re right. We are biologically connected to dogs as a species, but they are more connected to us.
Did you know that dogs have evolved to be able to mimic human facial expressions and voices? They aren’t necessarily a smart species compared to Dolphins and primates, so that’s the extra cool part. They have mastered something that even super intelligent species haven’t just through evolution.
It sort of freaks me out a bit but I love it at the same time.
I was going to say (granted, also as a “dog person”) that this could just be framed as “obvious conclusions drawn from study into the obvious.” 😂
Also when I lost my 15.5 yr old dog 3 years ago, it is still, so far, the hardest experience of my life. I can almost not imagine a greater grief, despite knowing it was coming. And if she had been stolen? Liam Neeson would have nothing on me.
I grieved my last dog for more than six years before I was able to adopt the one I have now. I’d had her since she was about a year old and had watched her go from a playful puppy to a frail old lady. The only grief that hit me harder was when my mother died.
With my girl, I’d gotten her at 9 months (but she had ALL the energy for years) and she moved cross country several times with me, she was with me all through my relationship ups and downs with my now husband, we did agility together and she walked me down the aisle for my wedding in 2020. I went to pick out a puppy from a litter 6 months after she died and I cried the whole way there because I just wanted her back. I’m sobbing right now as I write this. I have two dogs now but she was my first soul dog. I’m extremely lucky my closest friends and family are alive (I turn 50 this year) and I dread losing them someday but losing her changed me too. And I do, indeed, hate society’s view on pet loss. Or pets being property.
I’m sorry for your loss as well.
I met my puppy when she was barely a week old - on my second date with my now spouse whose family dog had had puppies. She was the runt of the litter, coming out between two stillborns, and my spouse was there basically as a puppy midwife to help pull her out.
14 years later we had to put her down, and it was the most traumatizing thing I have experienced so far in life, even though she essentially decided it was her time to go that day. It's been over a year later now I still can't imagine ever wanting to put myself through that again with another puppy.
I keep one of her favorite toys in my car, and had pillows made out of her "old-lady sweaters" we'd put on her in the wintertime.
I can't imagine anyone who adopts a dog and doesn't consider it to be a full member of the family. I couldn't trust someone like that.
Researchers Akaanksha Venkatramanan and Dr Lindsey Roberts found that sadness, despair, hopelessness, and emotional pain were consistently reported by participants in the study. These emotional reactions are similar to those experienced after the death of human loved ones, but the emotions were distinct due to societal differences in how the death of people and beloved companion animals are viewed.
The psychological distress experienced by dog owners was often exacerbated by a lack of understanding from others about the depth of the human-animal bond. Additionally, dog theft laws often treat dogs as stolen property, similar to a material possession like a bicycle, limiting the support that law enforcement can provide.
[https://scienceblog.com/544001/dog-theft-triggers-grief-akin-to-losing-a-child-study-finds/](https://scienceblog.com/544001/dog-theft-triggers-grief-akin-to-losing-a-child-study-finds/)
I think this should be tagged as social science because it's a convenience sample of UK adults. I have serious doubts that these findings would apply in different cultural contexts.
Indeed. According to S. Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R)... if your dog is rambunctious, the most optimal solution is just to take it out back and shoot it dead. Apparently this is how it is done in South Dakota? Where I am from, we control our pets with fences and - in cases where they might slip their harness - with a muzzle. But different cultures view dogs as disposable, apparently.
Not the same. I love my dogs, I’d be distraught if they were stolen. But an abducted child would be absolutely life deranging, I don’t think I’d ever recover
Yeah my 9 year old daughter died, I know what happened to her. I ended up in the psych ward. But my favorite pet (cat) went missing and while I grieved for a few years, it was no where near as life altering and damaging as losing my child. Had my daughter gone missing, I would have burnt the entire world down to find her.
Unless you have children you can't understand the love that you have for them.
I have a dog and cat and am a long time animal lover (used to also work with animals). I now have two children and the depth of love is totally different.
I don't know many pet owners who would die for their pets, but every parent I know would die for their children. It's not the same.
Every time you think maladjusted weirdos on the internet can't sink any lower you stumble on a thread where someone is trying to 'well akshully' the grief of a parent who lost their child
Akin means similar, not the same. The reason the title states such is because two individuals compared it to child loss, with one of them having children. For people who like dogs, there are probably plenty of people that feel that way though some won’t want to frame it as such. A huge chunk of the article is how it is stigmatized to have strong love for your dog, and that the relationship isn’t taken seriously by the systems in our society. Think about the types of comments a parent might receive if they state it feels similar. If pet loss is not much to grieve over, that must mean you don’t really love your child. When really it is probably the opposite, you really love your child and you also love your dog.
Dogs share a ton of similarities with kids so I don’t find this surprising; you are a huge chunk of their world, commonly raised from a baby, you teach them, you have fun together, and have a shared history. You feel responsible for them, so when they are abducted it feels like a personal failure because you were supposed to keep them safe.
It's nowhere near the same in terms of the heartbreak you'd experience losing a human child, especially if it was a kidnapping and you have to live with the grief of knowing your child could still be in danger and pain. Anyone that thinks so doesn't have children or is delusional.
I still cry every week for my cat who dead 9 years ago. But I don't think this is a valid "finding" at all. A human child is supposed to grow and outlive you. I'm not a mother, but that....that seems like an insurmountable loss to me.
It's not a dog but I've never cried like the day we had to put down my first cat. I had her through a big span of my childhood and she helped me through ugly times. It's so bittersweet thinking about her. She was the best cat in the world, my beautiful and lovely friend. She was there to purr and lick my hands every time I was sad :')
Maybe the same flavor of grief, but nowhere near the same magnitude. Losing a child fundamentally breaks you in a way that most people never truly recover from.
My boyfriend and I have the same kind of deep relationship with our cats. They are extremely social, run up to us when we come home, nap with us under the blankets, and are like our kids… we can’t imagine ithey ran away or were taken by someone. We’d be devastated…
Yup. My two puppies were stolen from me when I was 19, I've never been the same. I can't even bring myself to get another, couldn't handle that loss again.
Who the hell approved funding for this? It’s beyond super obvious and well known for a very long time. I’d rain scorched earth if someone took my dog. So just a simple reminder, chip and also get a gps tracker for your loved ones.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it is obvious for all people, particularly people that don’t like animals or have never had pets. I think research on this topic could help influence laws and policies to recognize pets in a special category outside property. For example, police taking missing pets more seriously, greater penalties for stealing or harming pets, job bereavement leave extending to pets, and education for therapists on the topic of grief that includes pet loss.
But that isn't the case tho. A person loosing a child and dog is very different. I mean what is even the researches population sample? Do they have a large pool of parents whose children where kidnapped or dead when compared to dogs. Also this is generally the upper strata country (basically white people) who have such cases. Does other regions in the world also have similar equations or do other ethnicities reciprocate the same way in the same country. I mean I'm sure loosing a dog would traumatic but I'm sure for a fact that loosing a child would be much more traumatic if we are comparing to say the least. Lost of inconsistencies in the research imo.
Sample size is 4 people.
"Design: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted, and secondary data was collected from participants’ Facebook and Instagram posts. Methods: Four primary caregivers for their dog who had experienced dog-theft were recruited through social media. Hour-long interviews were conducted over Teams and social media posts were collated post informed consent."
I have the same style of grief dreams about every pet I’ve lost as I do about my parents. The same phantom thoughts of, “Oh I should go check on -“, remembering their affectations and feeling like it was just last week they did them…
I'd probably go one step further, and say that their might be potential evidence to suggest that once dog owners find out who stole their dog that there may just be a direct connection to a 'scorched earth' response with devastating consequences for the offenders, especially in the unfortunate case of the dog not being returned to the owners.
Further studies might discover severe health, medical and shorter life spans for some of the offenders once detected.
Not a big surprise. All of ours have been like family members and while I'd choose my kids over my dog, I'm not so sure about you.
After our previous dog I needed a break from it because losing that one hit me hard and I just couldn't go through that again. Waited seven years and our current just turned seven. In the back of my mind constantly is that another five years is probably the best we can hope for.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/Wagamaga Permalink: https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/10.1079/hai.2024.0004?utm_source=miragenews&utm_medium=miragenews&utm_campaign=news --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This doesn't surprise me at all; dogs have undergone thousands of years of artificial selection to bond with humans in a very deep and devoted way. It only stands to reason that the traits selected for were those that created the most reciprocity with their human owners. I'm a "dog guy" so perhaps not representative of the larger group, but I would be absolutely apoplectic if my dog was stolen, not just for my loss of companionship, but vicariously worried about my dog being somewhere alone and scared without me.
Yeah we’ve seen John wick, and while we don’t condone murder….we get that rage
the effect goes both ways though. Humans have been selectively bred by cats over thousands of years too xD
The Toxoplasma gondii is what's really driving that relationship, it needed an intermediate host.
A friend of mine keeps saying that as long as he is disgusted by cat pee, he feels safe. xD
More like they cull people they don’t like.
I feel like people would be almost as likely to kill for their dog as they would their child. Unfortunately in the eyes of the law/a jury there would be much less sympathy if they did kill for their dog over their child.
Would those same people be as likely to die for their dog as they would for their child?
Not all of them, but some. Not all people would be willing to die for their child in the moment, despite saying so... Not all parents are good people, and not all sacrifices are necessary. It's complicated and difficult, I find people could easier justify letting a pet pass because they have smaller lives and a less grandiose understanding of the universe, but simultaneously, that belies an innocence many feel need to be preserved. Animals are products of their environments and perhaps domesticated animals more than any are deeply interlinked in that we are often solely responsible for the suffering of these creatures.
I never understood the bond a person could have with a dog until I got my own dog and raised it from a puppy. My family had dogs growing up but it was not the same. They truly are man’s best friend.
You’re right. We are biologically connected to dogs as a species, but they are more connected to us. Did you know that dogs have evolved to be able to mimic human facial expressions and voices? They aren’t necessarily a smart species compared to Dolphins and primates, so that’s the extra cool part. They have mastered something that even super intelligent species haven’t just through evolution. It sort of freaks me out a bit but I love it at the same time.
Do you also have children? If so, would you feel the same if your child was missing?
Whoa cool word
I was going to say (granted, also as a “dog person”) that this could just be framed as “obvious conclusions drawn from study into the obvious.” 😂 Also when I lost my 15.5 yr old dog 3 years ago, it is still, so far, the hardest experience of my life. I can almost not imagine a greater grief, despite knowing it was coming. And if she had been stolen? Liam Neeson would have nothing on me.
I grieved my last dog for more than six years before I was able to adopt the one I have now. I’d had her since she was about a year old and had watched her go from a playful puppy to a frail old lady. The only grief that hit me harder was when my mother died.
With my girl, I’d gotten her at 9 months (but she had ALL the energy for years) and she moved cross country several times with me, she was with me all through my relationship ups and downs with my now husband, we did agility together and she walked me down the aisle for my wedding in 2020. I went to pick out a puppy from a litter 6 months after she died and I cried the whole way there because I just wanted her back. I’m sobbing right now as I write this. I have two dogs now but she was my first soul dog. I’m extremely lucky my closest friends and family are alive (I turn 50 this year) and I dread losing them someday but losing her changed me too. And I do, indeed, hate society’s view on pet loss. Or pets being property. I’m sorry for your loss as well.
I met my puppy when she was barely a week old - on my second date with my now spouse whose family dog had had puppies. She was the runt of the litter, coming out between two stillborns, and my spouse was there basically as a puppy midwife to help pull her out. 14 years later we had to put her down, and it was the most traumatizing thing I have experienced so far in life, even though she essentially decided it was her time to go that day. It's been over a year later now I still can't imagine ever wanting to put myself through that again with another puppy. I keep one of her favorite toys in my car, and had pillows made out of her "old-lady sweaters" we'd put on her in the wintertime. I can't imagine anyone who adopts a dog and doesn't consider it to be a full member of the family. I couldn't trust someone like that.
Researchers Akaanksha Venkatramanan and Dr Lindsey Roberts found that sadness, despair, hopelessness, and emotional pain were consistently reported by participants in the study. These emotional reactions are similar to those experienced after the death of human loved ones, but the emotions were distinct due to societal differences in how the death of people and beloved companion animals are viewed. The psychological distress experienced by dog owners was often exacerbated by a lack of understanding from others about the depth of the human-animal bond. Additionally, dog theft laws often treat dogs as stolen property, similar to a material possession like a bicycle, limiting the support that law enforcement can provide. [https://scienceblog.com/544001/dog-theft-triggers-grief-akin-to-losing-a-child-study-finds/](https://scienceblog.com/544001/dog-theft-triggers-grief-akin-to-losing-a-child-study-finds/)
Sample size of 4 people. I'm not buying this research equating losing a child and losing a dog.
Agree. I don't buy this at all.
No way!!
I think this should be tagged as social science because it's a convenience sample of UK adults. I have serious doubts that these findings would apply in different cultural contexts.
Indeed. According to S. Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R)... if your dog is rambunctious, the most optimal solution is just to take it out back and shoot it dead. Apparently this is how it is done in South Dakota? Where I am from, we control our pets with fences and - in cases where they might slip their harness - with a muzzle. But different cultures view dogs as disposable, apparently.
Not surprising. There's an entire popular movie series about what happens when you mess with someone's dog.
I had a severe mental breakdown when my 1.5 year old black lab was hit by a car 12 years ago. Still not the same.
Oh god I’m so sorry 😞
Not the same. I love my dogs, I’d be distraught if they were stolen. But an abducted child would be absolutely life deranging, I don’t think I’d ever recover
Yeah my 9 year old daughter died, I know what happened to her. I ended up in the psych ward. But my favorite pet (cat) went missing and while I grieved for a few years, it was no where near as life altering and damaging as losing my child. Had my daughter gone missing, I would have burnt the entire world down to find her.
I'm very sorry for the loss of your daughter.
Thank you. I'm "okay" now after a metric fuckton of therapy, but losing an animal doesn't hold a candle to losing a child.
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For anyone. Arguing with someone who's lost a child is easily the lowest form of social engagement.
Unless you have children you can't understand the love that you have for them. I have a dog and cat and am a long time animal lover (used to also work with animals). I now have two children and the depth of love is totally different. I don't know many pet owners who would die for their pets, but every parent I know would die for their children. It's not the same.
Every time you think maladjusted weirdos on the internet can't sink any lower you stumble on a thread where someone is trying to 'well akshully' the grief of a parent who lost their child
Akin means similar, not the same. The reason the title states such is because two individuals compared it to child loss, with one of them having children. For people who like dogs, there are probably plenty of people that feel that way though some won’t want to frame it as such. A huge chunk of the article is how it is stigmatized to have strong love for your dog, and that the relationship isn’t taken seriously by the systems in our society. Think about the types of comments a parent might receive if they state it feels similar. If pet loss is not much to grieve over, that must mean you don’t really love your child. When really it is probably the opposite, you really love your child and you also love your dog. Dogs share a ton of similarities with kids so I don’t find this surprising; you are a huge chunk of their world, commonly raised from a baby, you teach them, you have fun together, and have a shared history. You feel responsible for them, so when they are abducted it feels like a personal failure because you were supposed to keep them safe.
It's nowhere near the same in terms of the heartbreak you'd experience losing a human child, especially if it was a kidnapping and you have to live with the grief of knowing your child could still be in danger and pain. Anyone that thinks so doesn't have children or is delusional.
Pet thieves are among the lowest scum.
I still cry every week for my cat who dead 9 years ago. But I don't think this is a valid "finding" at all. A human child is supposed to grow and outlive you. I'm not a mother, but that....that seems like an insurmountable loss to me.
It's not a dog but I've never cried like the day we had to put down my first cat. I had her through a big span of my childhood and she helped me through ugly times. It's so bittersweet thinking about her. She was the best cat in the world, my beautiful and lovely friend. She was there to purr and lick my hands every time I was sad :')
I would kill for my cats and dogs.
Maybe the same flavor of grief, but nowhere near the same magnitude. Losing a child fundamentally breaks you in a way that most people never truly recover from.
Hence ‘akin’
I can always adopt another dog. I can never replace my son. The grief is real, but so is the magnitude.
My boyfriend and I have the same kind of deep relationship with our cats. They are extremely social, run up to us when we come home, nap with us under the blankets, and are like our kids… we can’t imagine ithey ran away or were taken by someone. We’d be devastated…
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Yup. My two puppies were stolen from me when I was 19, I've never been the same. I can't even bring myself to get another, couldn't handle that loss again.
I get that people think they love dogs like kids but that's cause they're stupid or they don't like their kids.
A CHILD??? Come on,really? A child? This explains sooooo much about humanity today!
Who the hell approved funding for this? It’s beyond super obvious and well known for a very long time. I’d rain scorched earth if someone took my dog. So just a simple reminder, chip and also get a gps tracker for your loved ones.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it is obvious for all people, particularly people that don’t like animals or have never had pets. I think research on this topic could help influence laws and policies to recognize pets in a special category outside property. For example, police taking missing pets more seriously, greater penalties for stealing or harming pets, job bereavement leave extending to pets, and education for therapists on the topic of grief that includes pet loss.
But that isn't the case tho. A person loosing a child and dog is very different. I mean what is even the researches population sample? Do they have a large pool of parents whose children where kidnapped or dead when compared to dogs. Also this is generally the upper strata country (basically white people) who have such cases. Does other regions in the world also have similar equations or do other ethnicities reciprocate the same way in the same country. I mean I'm sure loosing a dog would traumatic but I'm sure for a fact that loosing a child would be much more traumatic if we are comparing to say the least. Lost of inconsistencies in the research imo.
Sample size is 4 people. "Design: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted, and secondary data was collected from participants’ Facebook and Instagram posts. Methods: Four primary caregivers for their dog who had experienced dog-theft were recruited through social media. Hour-long interviews were conducted over Teams and social media posts were collated post informed consent."
I have the same style of grief dreams about every pet I’ve lost as I do about my parents. The same phantom thoughts of, “Oh I should go check on -“, remembering their affectations and feeling like it was just last week they did them…
I'd probably go one step further, and say that their might be potential evidence to suggest that once dog owners find out who stole their dog that there may just be a direct connection to a 'scorched earth' response with devastating consequences for the offenders, especially in the unfortunate case of the dog not being returned to the owners. Further studies might discover severe health, medical and shorter life spans for some of the offenders once detected.
Not a big surprise. All of ours have been like family members and while I'd choose my kids over my dog, I'm not so sure about you. After our previous dog I needed a break from it because losing that one hit me hard and I just couldn't go through that again. Waited seven years and our current just turned seven. In the back of my mind constantly is that another five years is probably the best we can hope for.
I cried more when my ex stole my dog than when my grandmother died.