Why it's the best time to get a dog for your kid

There is one more reason to own a dog in your house. According to a new study, the man's best friend can also help reduce anxiety among children. Our loyal canine companion can help kids build social skills by stimulating conversation, which leads to less stress.

The researchers concluded that having a pet dog in the home was associated with a decreased probability of childhood anxiety. Although, they also mentioned that future studies still need to establish whether this relationship is causal and find out how pet dogs alleviate childhood anxiety if further studies would show that there is indeed a causal link.

They took into account the data from more than 600 children between the age of 6 and 7 years old and have paid their pediatricians a visit recently. The findings showed that 21 percent of those kids who do not own pets have tested positive on a screening test for anxiety while those have dogs in their homes only has 12-percent anxiety diagnosis for the same test.

"It may be that less anxious children have pet dogs or pet dogs make children less anxious," Dr. Anne Gadomski and colleagues wrote for their findings. The results of the study were published in the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

Gadomski, a research scientist and attending pediatrician at Bassett Healthcare Network, was aware of just how special pets can be to a child and she cited that there were instances that the children's first word is the name of their pet, she told NBC News. She believes that there is a very strong bond between children and their pets.

"From a mental health standpoint, children aged 7 to 8 often ranked pets higher than humans as providers of comfort and self-esteem and as confidants. Animal-assisted therapy with dogs affects children's mental health and developmental disorders by reducing anxiety and arousal or enhancing attachment," the researchers added.

"Because dogs follow human communicative cues, they may be particularly effective agents for children's emotional development."

In the study, the children were formed into two study groups: one with children who had a pet dog at home and the other with kids who do not have, according to another report from CBS News. The researchers said that they chose to study children with dogs because that was the most common pet and it allowed them to collect a large sample of children. The study included 370 kids with dogs and 273 kids who did not have one.