The cute dog photos helping pet owners deal with Covid-19
- Member numbers are soaring for social media groups dedicated to cute photos of dogs and other pets during coronavirus lockdowns
- Focusing on their pets keeps owners’ minds off their own plight, a psychoanalyst says: ‘Animals don’t know what’s going on. They’re just being animals.’
Pets are more than ever providing emotional solace as well as entertainment and comic relief for animal lovers on lockdown at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
Few things are as comforting as a picture of a cute dog. Research, meanwhile, has shown that gazing into your dog’s eyes elevates levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin for both of you, just as gazing into your child’s eyes does.
Revelling in dogs’ cuteness allows us to return to a simpler time, when the activities of daily living did not pose enormous risk. Now, people are turning to online pet groups to reproduce that cuddly feeling.
An administrator for Facebook page Cool Dog Group says the general purpose of the group is “to recreate that feeling you got as a kid when a dog turned up at school”.
“Excitement, joy – everyone remembers a day like that. It’s the talk of the school for days,” says the administrator, who wishes to remain anonymous.
