Pets improve our intellectual, emotional and physical health
So you want to live a mentally, emotionally and physically longer and better life? Get a pet.
Study after study in recent years show that people with pets are often more healthy in all facets of life. Whether it is the exercise we get when a dog walks us, or the calming, blood pressure-lowering influence of a purring cat on our laps, pets are good preventive medicine for us with almost no bad side effects, except for maybe dealing with the occasional hairball.
Local animal training and animal-assisted therapy expert Sherry Eddy said her 25 years of experience has shown her that people are becoming increasingly aware of the health benefits of having an animal companion. People with a wide range of medical issues do better with a pet in their lives, she said recently.
For example, the evidence is becoming overwhelming that an animal companion can lower a person's blood pressure and relieve stress, especially for people with high-stress careers. Others, such as shut-ins, benefit too.
While most research has centered on the role dogs and cats have in their caretakers' health, Eddy said whatever animal a person can connect and bond with seems to have the desired effect.
"There is a species for everyone out there," she said. "Not everyone is a dog person."
Eddy, who trains people to train animals to assist other humans, said she once had a classroom of kids who generally liked dogs. But one youngster just didn't take to the dog. She brought a bird from home, instead, and found the child responded to the bird.
Eddy, who says her own home is a menagerie, has a pot-bellied pig that relates well to humans, and she has had rabbits and chickens that have filled the role. Even reptiles can be good companions for kids who might not be reached in other ways.
Some people are now training miniature horses to fill the role previously done by guide dogs. Because the horse may live up to 40 years, it can be a lifelong companion, whereas a dog's shorter life span often requires working with several dogs in a person's life span.
"It is in its infancy, but it is growing quickly," she said of the mini-horse movement. "(Animal-assisted therapy) is kind of constantly changing and getting more technical and professional as it goes along."
Today, most nursing home professionals have come to understand the value of residents being able to interact with animals. The animals are therapeutic, but Eddy cautions that animals taken into nursing homes and some other situations in that role need some training to safely work with the residents. You don't want a large, active dog jumping up and knocking an elderly person over.
"Taking Grandma's dog to the nursing home to visit her can be beneficial. It is just not always documented," Eddy said.
There are training sessions and procedures in place for registering therapy animals. Eddy, who has worked in many settings, such as schools and with Alzheimer's patients, said a person working with a therapy animal doesn't have to have a human services background, but it helps.
Eddy doesn't have that background, but she often works with a human service professional to create the therapeutic program. The goal is to see improvement in the person through interaction with the animal that can be documented, she said. "It is not just recreational time."
Study: Owning a cat may be stroke of genius
Researchers with the Minnesota Stroke Institute at the University of Minnesota tracked more than 4,000 cat owners over10 years. They found having a cat as a pet can reduce a person's risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, including stroke, by 30 percent to 40 percent.
The researchers suspect the cats' anxiety-easing purring as a possible source of the health benefit for cat providers.
Results of the study, released in March at an international conference on stroke in New Orleans, surprisingly did not find the same protective benefits of having a dog as a pet.
But dogs have been identified as benefitting humans in other ways. One study found that walking with a dog gave senior citizens a boost in parasympathetic nervous system. Such activities calm and rest the body.
Pets seem to make an especially big difference in the lives of children who are dealing with death or illness of someone in the family. Some studies found children with dogs cope better, perhaps through the love the pets provide, or the routine required to care for the pet.
A whole new field of study is looking into whether dogs can detect diseases in humans. Dogs were trained in one study to identify patients with bladder cancer through the scent of the human's urine. Other dogs apparently can sense when their epileptic masters are about to have a seizure.