Health & Dog

 
The dogs help man in many ways because they:
prevent diseases in man
ease and accelerates the recovery process in man after disease
 
predicts diseases and crises
has a positive psychological effect on man
helps people who are disabled or ill
is used as "therapists" in hospitals, retirement homes and prisons
 
helps in emergency situations
helps police, military and custom authorities
performs many more important tasks for man
Therefore: let us accept that dogs are an integral part of our society and that they contributes to it in a positive way. Consequently we should treat them with dignity and give them the opportunity to trive along side man.

Dogs prevent disease

Exposure to stress for a prolonged period of time can cause serious health problems. A number of studies have shown that dogs protect their owners from many of the deleterious effects of stress. For example, dogs have been shown to reduce blood pressure, heart-rate and triglyceride levels in their owners - these effects were not related the additional exercise dogowners gain from walking their dog.

Dog-owner have among other a lower frequence of the following diseases compared to before they had a dog:
- Heart attack
- Coronary artery disease
- Dizziness
- Hay fever
- Colds
- Head aches

Indirectly, having a dog also prevents cardiovascular and other stress-related diseases by forcing the owner to exercise more and perform more physical activity.


Dogs facilitates the recovery process

Just one example that explains it all:
- A dog owner has an 8 times greater chance of being alive one year after a heart attack than a person not owning a dog.


Dogs can predict diseases and crises

Many dogs can warn their owner of an on-coming an epileptic seizure.

Many dogs can predict crisis of hypoglycemia in the blood. This is dangerous complication of diabetes.

Some dogs have been able to identify cancers in their owners.
Efforts are under way to train dogs to reliably identify cancers in order to use them as a novel method for identifying carcigenous cells at a much earlier stage than currently is possible.


Dogs have a positive psychological effect

It has been shown that dogs can help people psychologically through very painful and stress full periods like.
- The death of a close relative
- Divorce

It has also been shown that dogs can reduce the types of feelings that can make people ill if they become too serious and / or extends over too long a time period. Some examples are
- Anxiety
- Solitude
Dogs can also reduces depressions

Similarly, it has been shown that dogs can reinforce feelings like.
- Self-esteem
- Competence
- Autonomy
- Responsibility

 

Dogs help the disabled and the ill

The ability of dogs to help certain groups are well known:
- Guide dogs for the visually impaired or the blind
- Hearing dogs for the hearing impaired or the deaf
- Service dogs for the physically disabled
- Seizure-alert dogs for people with epilepsy

For all of these groups, the dogs also help to break social isolation and for some the dog can also help to reinforce the person's confidence and to give the person the courage to engage in activities.

Dogs are used as ”therapists”

In nursing homes dogs increase the level of communication and decrease the sense of loneliness.

In hospitals dogs increases communication, reduces the sense of loneliness and increase the speed with which patients recover.
They also help the chronically ill.

Some psychologists / psychiatrists, who work with children who suffer from extreme anxiety and where it can be very difficult to get to communicate with these children or just to gain a minimal amount of their trust, have successfully used dogs in their practice. Their clever use of dogs has helped them to "open-up" the child. It requires a deeper understanding of the possible relationships between humans and animals, and how animals influence people (children) and this approach can therefore only be used by some therapists.

 



In prisons dogs are used to rehabilitate the inmates:

- Teach them to take and have a responsibility
- Strengthen their self-esteem
- Reduce their sense of loneliness.

This is done eg., by allowing inmates to train service and senior dogs for the physically disabled and the elderly.

 

Dogs help in emergency situations

Dog helps find survivors (and diseased) in ruins after natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis as well as after human-made disasters such as wars, train wreckage and air plane craches.

 


Dogs help police, military and customs

Dogs can by their amazing sense of smell detect all sorts of things. Some examples are:

- Missing people, whether still alive or dead - even when lying under water.
- Smugling of people across borders
- Drugs (smuggling)
- Money (smuggling)
- Bombs
- Landmines
- Explosives / Weapons
- Gas, gasoline or other flammable liquids (eg. used as accelerants for arson)
- Chemical substances in optical discs, e.g. illegal copies of CD's and DVD's.
- Blood remains, e.g. homicides
- Semen residues, e.g. rape
- Agricultural products, e.g. some microbes and pathogenic organisms are not present on the Australian continent and they do therefore not allow the import of food items by visitors in order to protect their crops.
- And much more ...!



Even more abilities...

Dogs can also learn to detect termites and fungal infections in houses.
They can also find truffles in the forest even though it is the pig that has is famous for this kind of work.

 

 
   
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