Human Enjoyment in Tactile Interaction with Horses and Dogs: A Comparative Study

Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) are increasingly being integrated into human healthcare services due to their demonstrated positive impacts on mental and physical health. This research involved two separate experiments with 10 therapy horses and 18 therapy dogs. In both studies, the effect of touch treatments was assessed on human heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV) and positive emotional responses evaluated by the Positive Affect Scale (PAS) survey representing three categories: activated, relaxed and safe. The experiment involving horses also explored the effect of human experience with horses on human HR, HRV and PAS categories. Forty-nine human participants interacted with horses (4/participant), and 44 participants interacted with dogs (1-4/participant) individually. The interactions occurred under two treatments: forced touch (animals were restricted and required to interact) and consensual touch (animals were free and could voluntarily choose to interact). Each participant's HR and HRV were recorded using a heart rate monitor. Each horse was equipped with a heart rate monitor. After each treatment, participants completed the PAS survey on a scale of 1-5, where 1 indicated “did not feel this way at all” and 5 indicated “felt this way very much”. A GLIMMIX model with repeated measures was used for statistical analysis, and Pearson correlations analyzed the relationship between human and horse HR. During forced touch interactions with horses, human HR was higher (p = .0001) and HRV (p = .0065) was lower compared to consensual touch interactions. Human experience with horses did not affect HR (p = .3043) or HRV (p = .1366) during human-horse touch interactions, but it did influence responses on the PAS survey, with more experienced participants reporting a lower "activated" (p = .0058) and higher "relaxed" (p = .0275) and "safe" (p = .0343) feelings compared to participants with less horse experience. No correlation was determined between human and horse HR (r = 0.09). In the dog study, human HR (p = .2513) and HRV (p = .1691) did not differ between the two touch treatments during human-dog interactions. Touch treatment did not influence PAS scores in either human-horse (all p > .1373) or human-dog (all p > .0953) touch treatments. Participants perceived interactions with dogs more positively than with horses, as indicated by the descriptive comparison of PAS scores across the two studies. The findings suggest that providing horses with the choice to interact with humans may affect participants' cardiac arousal, while no such impact was observed in human cardiac responses during interactions with dogs. These findings indicate that the influence of choice on human response may vary depending on the animal species involved. Understanding the species-specific variations is crucial for maximizing the success and effectiveness of AAI programs