Abstract

Would the Dog Be a Person's Child or Best Friend? Revisiting the Dog-Tutor Attachment.

Highlights

  • Specialty section: This article was submitted to Comparative Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

  • What do people search for in an affectionate relationship with dogs? Are people searching for a new experience of caring for someone who depends on them for basic needs? For an emotional support in difficult times? For a long-term and consistent relationship, a strong connection, a mutually enjoyable contact? In other words, are people searching for a child, for a best friend or both? And how does it work from the dog’s perspective? The Bowlby’s theory (Bowlby, 1969) focused on child-caregiver attachment is being used to explain dog-tutor attachment

  • The skin-to-skin contact triggers oxytocin release, the increase of which has been demonstrated in affiliative interactions between dogs and humans (Nagasawa et al, 2009, 2015; Handlin et al, 2011, 2012). This important aspect makes the interspecific bond similar to the child-caregiver attachment. Along this opinion piece we focused our analyses in the relationship between an adult dog and an adult tutor, it must be noticed that, when they are puppies, dogs have the opportunity to establish a young-caregiver attachment bond, which adds even more complexity to this discussion, since it can involve a mother and/or a human caregiver (Prato-Previde et al, 2009; Mariti et al, 2020)

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Summary

Introduction

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Comparative Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. If we compare the dog-tutor bond to the child-caregiver attachment, what would be the role, and the weight, of the attachment system, and caregiving system that the tutor and the dog carry in this relationship?

Results
Conclusion

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