The 7 Unmistakable Personality Traits That Prove You’re a True Pet Owner
Sonja Henrikseen
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In a world with billions of individuals, it can sometimes feel like you are alone in a sea of strangers. It can be tough to find your people—so to speak—and especially as adults, finding a community can be challenging. If you’ve ever struggled to find like-minded people and consider yourself an animal lover, your passion for pets could be the right place to start.
Whether you know it or not, if you’re an animal lover, you probably share these seven personality traits with other pet owners!
Each of these tidbits about pet owners is backed by real science—your pets are helping you just as much as you help them. Whether you become a more empathetic and social person because of your pets, or your animals help to bring out your natural creativity and reduce your stress, you’ll find that your relationship with your four-legged friends influences much more than you might think.
1. Generosity
If you’ve ever been walking your dog and realized you didn’t have a poop bag on you, you can confirm that other dog owners are almost always happy to give you an extra bag or two. By the same token, animal lovers are often willing to give their time, money, and resources to help someone in need.
“People with a close attachment to their pets indicated a greater willingness to help other people than owners who kept their animals at arm’s length,” says a 2002 study from the University of Florida. This study also examined how kids raised with animals related to their peers later in life. Kids who have responsibilities for their family pets are often faster to care for friends, family, partners, and neighbors since they learn from a young age to care for someone other than themselves.
2. Reliability
If a pet owner tells you they will arrive at a certain time, help you with a problem, or bring something to an event, you can depend on them to keep their word. Pet owners are more organized and scheduled than non-pet owners because they have to follow a routine for their pets. This helps them to develop those skills needed to be dependable both at work and in their personal lives.
3. Youthfulness
Would you believe it if we told you that owning a pet can reduce your brain’s age by 15 years? No, that doesn’t mean that owning animals makes you immature—it means that pet ownership enhances cognition and brain health, and even helps to protect your brain against age-related decline.
While pet ownership is good for your brain at all stages of life, seniors who own dogs, cats, and other animals can especially benefit from the cognition-supporting component of life with an animal.
4. Cooperation
If it seems counterproductive to have pets in the workplace, in truth, animals can help to improve teamwork among coworkers! By alleviating stress and enhancing your capacity for creativity, pets can help keep you calm and in the right headspace to work with others. For many people, animals also offer an ice-breaker or conversation starter with new people, including coworkers. A chat about your pets is neutral, and professional, but also personal, and can create that sense of community and trust that you need to work well with others.
5. Empathy
According to a 2019 genetic study from the Roslin Institute and Scotland’s Rural College, animal lovers may be more empathic from birth! Based on the findings of the study, animal lovers appear to carry a specific version of the gene that produces oxytocin. Also called the love hormone, oxytocin is released into your bloodstream when you are around someone you have deep feelings for, and can create feelings of deep connection. Study findings indicate that people with this variation of the oxytocin production gene are both more empathic and loving towards animals and other people.
6. Loyalty
Interestingly, pet owners overwhelmingly display behaviors that they think align with the values of their pets. “People imbue their pet dogs and cats with humanlike values and these perceptions are not simply the projection of owners’ personal values onto their dog or cat,” says a 2022 study entitled The Effect Of Similarity Between Owner’s Values And Their Perceptions Of Their Pet’s Values On Life Satisfaction. “Similarity between owners’ personal value profiles and their perceptions of their dog’s values profile had a positive impact on owners’ life satisfaction.”
7. Creativity
The happiness you get from sharing your life with a pet can help boost creativity.
The responsibility of owning a pet can become a meditative process for many people. Walking your dog, feeding your cat, petting or playing with your pet, and all of the everyday things you do as an animal owner help to alleviate symptoms of stress.
“Chronic stress has the ability to decrease one’s ability to live in a space of creativity,” says Quinn Klessel in an article for NeuroSalon on how stress affects creative thinking. The daily stress reduction of pet ownership not only serves to make pet owners happier but also can help them more comfortably and abundantly express their creativity.
It’s also worth noting that pet owners are constantly being challenged with problems that need creative solutions. Pet owners come up with incredibly innovative ways of making their lives easier and taking better care of their pets, from creative ways to feed dogs and cats pills to homemade contraptions that make nail trims a little less stressful.