New Study Reveals Your Work Stress Is Affecting Your Dog

May 31

If you’ve ever felt guilty for coming home from work too tired to walk your dog, you’re not alone—and now, science suggests your stress might be impacting your pet’s health more than you think.

A new study published in Scientific Reports (Nature) reveals that job-related stress in dog owners is linked to higher levels of stress in their dogs. Researchers from Virginia Tech surveyed 85 employed dog owners and found that both direct and indirect effects of job stress can “cross over” to pets—just like it does with human family members.

Emotional Contagion Between Humans and Dogs

The idea of “crossover stress” is already well-established among people. For instance, research has shown that job stress can affect spouses children, leading to negative interactions and decreased relationship quality. Now, this new study builds on past research suggesting dogs are also capable of emotional contagion—essentially "catching" feelings from humans.

Studies have demonstrated that dogs show behavioral and physiological signs of stress in response to human stress signals, such as elevated cortisol levels or distress when hearing a person cry. Another study found that the long-term stress levels of dogs and owners are actually synchronized, based on matching hair cortisol levels.

Two Ways Stress Can Transfer to Dogs

The researchers propose two mechanisms for how an owner’s job stress affects their dog:

Direct Transmission (Emotional Contagion)
Dogs may sense their owner's emotional state and mirror it. This kind of empathetic stress transmission aligns with findings from earlier studies showing dogs are highly attuned to their owners' emotional cues.
Indirect Transmission (Behavioral Changes)
Stressed employees may behave differently at home—spending less time with their dog, taking shorter walks, or even resorting to harsher discipline. These behavioral shifts may harm the owner-dog relationship and increase stress for the pet.

Another factor examined was work-related rumination—the tendency to continue thinking about work during leisure time. This habit, already linked to worse outcomes in marital and parent-child relationships (Cropley et al., 2006), may also lead dog owners to become less attentive or emotionally available to their pets, inadvertently contributing to their stress.

How They Measured Dog Stress

Researchers evaluated stress in dogs through two methods:

Owner-reported stress using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS), asking how stressed the dog seemed on a scale from 0–100.
Behavioral indicators based on 11 scientifically supported signs of stress in dogs, such as lip licking, yawning, or pacing. These indicators were drawn from established research, including tools like the C-BARQ.

This dual-method approach helped account for potential bias in owner perception, which previous research shows is often flawed when it comes to evaluating pet well-being.

What This Means for Dog Owners

The findings add to a growing body of literature encouraging dog owners to think critically about how their emotional state and work-life balance might affect their pets. If you're frequently overwhelmed by work or unable to mentally “log off” after hours, your dog could be silently suffering the consequences.

While the study was correlational and doesn’t prove causation, the results support a broader understanding that pets are emotionally interconnected with their humans, and not just passive observers of household dynamics.

Sources

McDonald, A., Harris, E. K., & Gabriel, A. S. (2025). Workplace stress crosses over to pet dogs: The role of work-related rumination. Scientific Reports, 15, Article 1131. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-01131-x
Roth, L. S. V., & Jensen, P. (2021). Long-term stress in dogs is related to the human–dog relationship and personality traits. Scientific Reports, 11, Article 17717. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97117-6
King, D. B., & DeLongis, A. (2014). When couples disconnect: Rumination and withdrawal as pathways from work stress to relationship problems. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 19(2), 150–159.
Sundman, A. S., et al. (2019). Long-term stress levels are synchronized in dogs and their owners. Scientific Reports, 9, Article 7391. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43851-x
Haverbeke, A., et al. (2008). Training methods of military dog handlers and their effects on the team's performances. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 113(1-3), 110–122.