WSU Study Says Women are Why Dogs are Now Treated Like Family

Wazzu says y'all can throw that whole "man's best friend" baloney out the window, because research says it's actually women, for multiple reasons, who have been responsible for generations in the indoctrination of the canines into the fabric of the family.

It almost seems silly, bordering on insulting to some, if you asked a dog owner today if they considered their woofer a part of the family. You're joking, right?

Giving them names, letting them crawl up on the furniture, providing funerals at the end of their lives? Yes, all the ladies doing.

In a cross-cultural analysis, Washington State University researchers found several factors may have played a role in building the mutually beneficial relationship between humans and dogs, including temperature, hunting and surprisingly—gender.

The study found women really took to dogs just as dogs were becoming domesticated and that women were the ones responsible for things like them giving them names, nurturing them, enthusiastically including them in family gatherings and allowing them up on the furniture.

“We found that dogs’ relationships with women might have had a greater impact on the dog-human bond than relationships with men,” said Jaime Chambers, a WSU anthropology Ph.D. student and first author on the paper published in the Journal of Ethnobiology.

Enter your number to get our free mobile app

She continued, “Humans were more likely to regard dogs as a type of person if the dogs had a special relationship with women. They were more likely to be included in family life, treated as subjects of affection and generally, people had greater regard for them.”

One of the main conclusions of the study is that dogs are everywhere humans are where they have been able to thrive. Find a thriving human? You'll find a dog. Probably nurtured properly by a woman. Not a bad deal, dogs have hitched themselves to us and followed us all over the world, and we've been on the receiving end of their unconditional love and loyalty. It's been a very successful and mutually beneficial relationship.