While I am a great pet lover, I have a few friends who are not interested in ever owning a pet, and I respect their decisions, even if I never fail to let them know how much good owning a pet would do to their lives, they are probably tired of hearing that (Lol), but of course, I say it out of love.
On this platform, I love to share about animal infections, and how we can protect our animals from getting them, and by extension, protect ourselves as well. I don't think I have ever shared scientific-based reasons why you should own a pet with you my lovely friends, and certainly, I will also share this post with my offline friends to let them know that this love for pets has some backup of science.
Indeed there is nothing compared to that lovely feeling of coming home to a loyal friend/companion, unconditional love from your pet goes a long way to provide you comfort, it will help to reduce stress, improve the health of your heart condition, also helps children with their emotional and social skill.
The research on the interaction between animals and humans is new relatively, so there is not much information about it, but some studies have shown the positive health effects of owning a pet.
Consistently interacting with animals has been shown to decrease cortisol levels and lower blood pressure. Other studies also show that close contact/relationship with animals is a strong means to the reduction of lonliness, boosting one's mood and increasing the feelings of social support.
According to Dr.Layla Esposito, there is no one answer about a pet helping to cure ailments, but if you have a goal of increasing your physical activity, you could own a dog, that you would walk daily and increase physical activity, If on the other hand, you have a goal to reduce stress, watching a fish swim can help you feel calm, so there is no one animal that can solve all your issues, you get one depending on the purpose of your needs.
Therapy dogs are also really good at providing comfort and support to their owners, they are sometimes even introduced to hospitals and nursing homes to help patients reduce anxiety and stress. Dogs are very present in their owner's life, they understand when their human owners are struggling with something and they just need to be available for them. This is what, Dr. Ann Berger who is a physician and researcher had to say about owning a dog.
Although, researchers are still studying how safe it is to bring animals into an hospital setting as animals may expose people to more germs. Espito says, there is a current study focused on the safety of bringing animals to visit children who have cancer.
There was a study where kids were introduced to real animals, those kids at the end of the research were discovered to have better social skills than kids who were not introduced to animals. Some children with autism spectrum disorder were also introduced to play with guinea pigs in the classroom, with of course, a close supervision, when the children spent 10 minutes playing with the guinea pigs, their anxiety level was noticed to have dropped significantly.
The children in question also had better social interaction and they became more engaged with their pers, it was for this reason that, researcher suggested that animals create a sense of unconditional acceptance, helping the kids to remain calm and comforted.
Dogs have a unique sense of smell that is stronger than that of humans over a million times, they have been found to smell out drugs and bombs, and this only mans they have the capacity to sniff out what is going out in the body also. Studies have shown that, trained dogs have the ability to differentiate between an healthy person and one suffering cancer of the lungs.
It has also been discovered that, taking care of pets teach children responsibility, they know that apart from themselves, they also need to take care of someone/something else.
