Starting college — and being away from home — can be stressful.

Heck, just being a college student can cause anxiety. Especially if you’re missing more than just your two-legged family.

Researchers at Washington State University recruited 145 first-year students for the study, all of whom had left pets back home. The group was randomly halved. One group was granted access to a therapy-dog lounge on campus where they could drop in for up to two hours at a time seven times during the semester. The other was a control group assigned to a dog-lounge waitlist.

If you’re a dog lover, it might not surprise you that the students given dog-lounge access reported far less stress, worry and depression than those who were waitlisted. They showed increased self-compassion, which is linked to better emotional regulation and well-being.

In addition, the students who got dog time saw only a slight increase in stress over the course of the semester compared with the waitlisted students.

Notably, the research team previously established that even brief interactions with therapy dogs lowers cortisol, a hormone that plays a key role in the body’s stress response.

The recent study’s goal was to see how well a less-structured program that gave students more say in how they interacted with the dogs might work. The researchers said their findings suggest that similar, informal dog-lounge programs could help students on any campus.

But they didn’t give the friendly pooches all the credit for lowered stress — interacting with the dog handlers and other students likely helped, too.

Still, we all know never to discount the power of cold noses and warm hearts.