If you have yet to be asked by your darling daughter or son if they can get a dog, it’s only a matter of time! For many of us mums the answer is usually “no” as we consider cost and hygiene, believing a dog will only encourage our kids to develop asthma.
However, it seems that the opposite is actually the truth, according to a large Swedish study.
The new research, which has been published in JAMA Pediatrics, analysed 650,000 children and found that exposure to a dog in the first year of life was linked to a 13% lower risk of asthma in later childhood.
When dogs lick themselves, skin cells covered in saliva – animal dander – are shed, and, according to the study, kids exposed to this in infancy are less likely to develop asthma.
Living on a farm also helped, with the risk of developing asthma halved.
"Our results confirmed the farming effect and we also saw that children who grew up with dogs had about 15% less asthma than children without dogs," Lead scientist Prof Tove Fall, from Uppsala University in Sweden, said.
Professor Fall says this fits in with the idea that the more exposed we are to dust and dirt, the better our tolerance of common allergens will be: "That's important information for parents who are pregnant or are planning to have a baby, that they should not worry about getting a dog or a puppy if they would like to."
However, more evidence is needed and researchers have said that buying a puppy for kids who are allergic to dogs would not be a good idea.
"But if you have an allergic child you should not get a dog to cure your child. It won't work and will probably make the allergy worse."
