Husband & I once had to answer a question from a neighbor, "You feed and take care of the dog but your grey won't fetch slippers or play ball, so what does the dog do for you?"
Having pets have proven health & emotional benefits. The following is from the CDC website:
Most households in the United States have at least one pet. Why do people have pets? There are many reasons. Some of the health benefits of pets are listed below.
Pets can decrease your:
Blood pressure
Cholesterol levels
Triglyceride levels
Feelings of loneliness
Pets can increase your:
Opportunities for exercise and outdoor activities
Opportunities for socialization
_________
When husband & I adopted 2 retired greyhounds, we didn't expect them to fetch our slippers/newspaper, play ball with us for hours, be mean to trespassers, etc.yada, yada...Based on our good experience with our 2 adopted cats, pet ownership is just so much more than your pets being able to do tricks for you (Sebastian has learned how to roll over, though and Louie can now sit, ;). But before we got our 2 dogs, I barely knew our neighbors, now, we know almost everyone in our block. Whenever husband has a bad day at work, the pups & cats will be all over him when he comes home, whether he likes the loving or not, it will be given to him in the form of licks, headbutts, purrs and furballs on his lap. When I am walking with our pups, people not familiar with the greyhound breed tend to avoid us (they don't know, our pups will just lick them a lot). We get more walking exercise and Vitamin D (if the sun ever shows up here in upstate NY). I can go on and on about the benefits, there's just too many to enumerate.
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