C-P.A.W.W. to study health effects that walking shelter dogs has on veterans and dogs

(University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus) Veterans will walk shelter dogs in an intervention aimed at reducing stress levels and improving psychological outcomes. Researchers will collect various measures of physiological stress from veterans. They will examine stress levels in the shelter dogs themselves by collecting the heart rate variability of the dogs. It will examine the reciprocal nature of human-animal interaction and may help to uncover mechanistic underpinnings of the effects that interacting with canines have upon veterans with post-traumatic stress.

from EurekAlert! - Social and Behavioral Science http://ift.tt/2hX08yp