Stressed students can reduce anxiety, enhance thinking skills by petting therapy dogs: Study ANI | Updated: May 16, 2021 19:26 IST Washington [US], May 16 (ANI): A new study has found that college students who are under pressure may bust their stress by spending time petting a therapy dog. The study was published in AERA Open, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. According to the new Washington State University research, programs exclusively focused on petting therapy dogs improved stressed-out students' thinking and planning skills more effectively than programs that included traditional stress-management information. The study demonstrated that stressed students still exhibited these cognitive skills improvements up to six weeks after completion of the four-week-long program.