“When something bad happens, when it seems like the world is ending… people are like, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna get a dog,’” Elias Weiss Friedman recently told the podcast The Happiness Lab. “‘What am I waiting for? Why am I delaying happiness?’” Weiss Friedman is the man behind The Dogist, the wildly successful Instagram account that takes a street-style lens to man’s best friend. His new book, This Dog Will Change Your Life, goes further, documenting the many ways a pet pooch can boost your health and wellbeing. And there is scientific evidence to back up his claims.

A recent study showed that participants felt less pain when with a dog. Owning a dog can also lead to a massive drop in your risk of heart disease – partly due to the calming effect that a pet can have, with further studies showing that just the act of petting a dog can lower your blood pressure. But a big factor is that dog owners tend to get more exercise.

Maintaining eye contact with a dog can increase the presence of oxytocin – the “love hormone” – in both you and your dog. And that’s not all. There’s a sense that dogs don’t just look at you, they see you.

“Dogs are one of the only species that instinctively look, from their perspective, to the right of human beings’ faces,” says Dr Chris Blazina, a psychologist and author who specialises in pets, or “animal companions,” as he prefers. “That’s the side of our face that shows our most honest facial expressions,” he adds, noting the well-established “left-side bias” theory.

Whether we’re aware of all of this when we take on the responsibility of a pet or not, some of it must be sinking in. Reports suggest that the ownership of dogs and cats is on the rise – especially when it comes to men. Millennial men account for 63 per cent of dog ownership within their age bracket, recording a double-digit increase since 2023. A further 46 per cent of Millennial cat owners are men, also reflecting a substantial growth.

Globally, cats are more commonplace than dogs as pets. And across all age groups, a man is now more likely to own a cat than a woman is.

“The stats definitely indicate that men having cats is increasing,” says Daniel Warren-Cummings, the cat behaviour officer at the welfare charity Cats Protection. “Moreover, more men are happy to talk about being cat owners.”

This distinction is important, he feels. “There’s a weird sense that, in recent history, it wasn’t seen to be ‘manly’ to have a cat.” This wasn’t always the case – going further back, he acknowledges some “quote-unquote ‘classic’ male figures, such as Ernest Hemingway” who were widely celebrated as cat owners.

“The younger generation coming up are a bit more open and not into this very narrow idea of what a man is,” Warren-Cummings says. “It’s nice to think we’re getting back to the stage where people are more confident to say, ‘I like cats.’”

In 2019, Blazina co-wrote an academic paper titled “Do Men Underreport And Mask Their Emotional Attachment To Animal Companions? The Influence Of Precarious Masculinity On Men’s Bonds With Their Dogs”. It covered the sway that traditional gender roles still have and the limited vocabulary that men often have when it comes to describing their relationship with dogs. He says that this is often down to how men are trained by society.

“Men are supposed to stand alone,” he says. The perception has been that they shouldn’t need emotional support from anyone – and certainly not an animal. The reality is, though, that human beings are inherently social animals.

“We need connection to survive,” Blazina says. “There’s a Harvard study that came out a few years ago that showed that it’s not your politics, not your religion, not your money that determines wellbeing – it’s how connected you are.” It concluded that loneliness was as hazardous to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

“Almost a third of people live alone as adults,” Blazina says. “One in 10 Americans don’t have a close friend. So, what do you do with that?” His answer: get a dog.

Weiss Friedman calls dogs “furry icebreakers”. “Dogs not only provide a fantastic form of healthy companionship, but they often make your chance of meeting another human significantly higher,” he tells MR PORTER. “Having a dog as a single guy can signal to others that you’re ready for commitment. Sometimes, all we need is a little push – or pull, in this case.”

For many, an animal can even be a more reliable friend than another person. According to Blazina, 62 per cent of men said that their bond with their dog or cat was almost always secure – while only 10 per cent could report the same of their closest human connection.

“It’s a lot easier to be open or engaged with an animal that’s not going to judge you or speak back to you,” Warren-Cummings agrees.

They can also give you a sense of purpose – feeding, grooming and, in the case of dogs, exercise. “For people who are struggling, that is maybe part of their only routine that they have for the day,” Warren-Cummings says.

More than anything, having a pet is a way of staying present. We take them out for a walk, they take us out of ourselves. And, in the way they behave, they set an example for us.

“Dogs aren’t burdened by an ego,” says Elias Weiss Friedman, who consulted Professor Erin Hecht at the Canine Brains Project at Harvard for his book. “They don’t ruminate and worry about a bunch of what-ifs or could-have-beens. If they see a butt, they’re gonna sniff it.”

“Dogs teach us to be more complete as human beings,” Blazina says.

Likewise, cats are also free from the trappings of the human condition. “Cats do not need to examine their lives, because they do not doubt that life is worth living,” the philosopher and author John Gray writes in his 2020 book Feline Philosophy: Cats And The Meaning Of Life. “Human self-consciousness has produced the perpetual unrest that philosophy has vainly tried to cure.” His advice: be more cat. Or, indeed, dog.