What is Pet Therapy
& How Can it Help You Overcome Hurdles
and Live a Better Life? Animals have an uncanny ability to make people smile. They snuggle up to you when you’re lonely, distract you from your worries, and provide unconditional love and companionship. While pet owners have reveled in these benefits for ages, the health care field has only recently begun to harness the ability of animals to help people feel good, in a novel form of treatment known as pet therapy. What is Pet Therapy, and What are the Benefits? Pet therapy (also called animal-assisted activities (AAA) and animal-assisted therapy (AAT)) involves using animals to help people heal physically, socially, emotionally, and/or cognitively. Dogs, cats and other specially chosen and trained animals are brought into various health care settings, where they interact with patients. Animals can have profound effects on people, and, according to the Delta Society, a non-profit organization that brings professionally trained animals to people with mental and physical disabilities, in health care and other settings they can help: • Teach empathy
• Focus people’s attention on things other than themselves (and their problems)
• Promote nurturing skills
• Build feelings of trust and bonding
• People to feel accepted
• Provide entertainment
• Provide mental and physical stimulation
• Decrease heart rate and blood pressure
• People to feel spiritually fulfilled
• People to socialize (with the animals and with other people) How Can Animals be Beneficial in Your Life? Adopting a pet can provide the same mental and physical benefits for you as pet therapy animals provide for people in health care settings. They can decrease your feelings of loneliness, increase your opportunities to socialize and even, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lower your blood pressure, cholesterol levels and triglyceride levels. Meanwhile, pets, according to Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training of Sedona Training Associates, can help you tap into your natural state of happiness. “Happiness and fulfillment are our natural state. Pets help us get in touch with this natural state of happiness because they take our attention off ourselves and our problems. And when we take our attention off ourselves we always feel happier,” he says. Further, pets offer unconditional love in a way that even many people cannot. “Pets are often easier to love than people. They do not talk back! And when we love anyone or anything, it brings the natural happiness that’s inside all of us to the forefront of our awareness,” Dwoskin says. Of course, pet ownership is not for everyone, particularly those who may have allergies or who don’t have the time it takes to care for a pet. The good news is that you can experience the benefits that animals provide not only by owning a pet of your own, but also by visiting with animals. So go for a horseback ride, visit an aquarium, volunteer at your local animal shelter or just watch animals in nature, and you’re in for a treat: a boost to your own physical and mental well-being. Sources The Delta Society
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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