With their clockwork expectations for feeding, walks, affection and play, animals don’t cut their owners much slack—and that can be a good thing for chronic disease sufferers of all types.

The benefits of animals in health care were first noted by Florence Nightingale in 1860, when she wrote that a pet tortoise named Jimmy provided great comfort to wounded soldiers hospitalized during the Crimean War. In the 1960s, child psychologist Boris Levinson observed that a withdrawn, non-verbal child suddenly began communicating when Levinson’s dog, Jingles, was in the room.The field of “pet therapy” was born, and visits from trained therapy animals are now commonplace in hospitals and nursing homes.

But outside of institutional settings, pets can also help people on a more ongoing basis with the daily management of long-term health conditions. According to University of Michigan research scientist Mary Janevic, this is especially true of chronic pain sufferers looking for non-pharmacological interventions.

In 2019, Janevic led a small study of older adults with arthritis, lower back pain and other conditions, and found that pets not only helped improve mood, but compelled their owners to stick to behavioural routines that improved their pain in the long run. These included daily walks, feeding, cleaning, affection and play. “When it hurts, you don’t feel like getting up and doing anything, but it’s a use-it-or- lose-it situation,” Janevic says. “When your body becomes decon- ditioned, weaker muscles lead to more pain.”

In addition to all that, Janevic also points out that pets’ greatest superpower against chronic suffering is their talent for drawing all the attention and focus. “If you’re distracted from the pain, you perceive less pain, and therefore you are in less pain,” she explains.

Kelly Redmon, a Virginia-based therapist who suffers from complex regional pain syndrome, says fostering guinea pigs for a local rescue group has helped her cope with an often excruciating condition. “When I care for my animals, I have to stay present even through a flare-up,” she says. “I can’t get caught in a spiral of wondering, ‘Will the pain last forever?’”

Sometimes, Redmon adds, her pets provide vicarious joy. “When I watch my guinea pigs run around their little playpen through all the tunnels, I can see that it makes them happy, and that makes me happy, too.”