Photo: De'Andre Bush | Unsplash
For college students under pressure, a dog may be the best stress fighter around. Programs exclusively focused on petting therapy dogs improved stressed-out students' thinking and planning skills more effectively than programs that included traditional stress-management information. Stressed students still demonstrated these cognitive skill improvements up to six weeks after completion of the four-week-long program. Human-animal interaction programs help by letting struggling students relax as they talk and think about their stressors. Through petting animals, they are more likely to relax and cope with the stressors rather than become overwhelmed. This enhances students' ability to think, set goals, get motivated, concentrate and remember what they are learning.
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