Pets Are Good for Us: Where Science and Common Sense Meet

“Watch a Lassie movie and spit into a cup. It doesn’t sound like it, but this is cutting-edge research. By analyzing saliva, researcher Cheryl Krause-Parello can tell that merely watching a dog in a movie lowers people’s stress. In recent years, research has demonstrated the healthful benefits of pets…[Researchers] learned that people feel better after watching a Lassie flick because their levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress, take a free fall.”

http://kajama.com/pets-good-us-science-common-sense-meet/