
08/23/2025
How long are dogs affected by a human’s stress?
The study didn’t test how long dogs are affected by a human’s stress, simply whether they were immediately affected by smelling a jar with the scent of human stress. Each dog would smell the jar for 20 seconds before being released into the room with three bowls. “We know that a short exposure was enough to influence their response,” Dr. Parr-Cortes says, “but we don’t know how long these effects might last.”
It’s worth noting that in this study, the stress samples came from strangers—not the dogs’ owners. Separate studies published in Scientific Reports have found that popular herding dog breeds mirror the long-term stress levels of their owners and that long-term stress in dogs is related to the human-canine relationship and owners’ personality traits.
https://alaskadogworks.com/stress-and-your-dog/