Health in older cat and dog owners: The HUNT-study

Copyright © 2013 Ingela Enmarker et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The aim of this population study was to identify personality traits among older (>65 years) male and female owners of cats and dogs and to com-pare their general health status in relation to their personality. Further, the aim was to exa-mine whether current cat and dog ownership could be predicted by the owners ’ personality and health. Data were collected from the North-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT) in Norway. In-cluded were a total of 1897 cat or dog owners between the ages of 65 years and 101 years. The results showed that there were a higher propor