Glob-a-log

There are many reasons why people take pets. Some do it for the children, some for the company – and some, I suppose, to combat those late night munchies, and for their fur.

What most who own pets – and those who do not – probably won’t know is that pets can also save your lives in many different ways. No, not in that highly annoying fashion of Lassie saving Timmy from drowning for the umpteenth time but as a type of general health and miracle workers.

Not that your cat will suddenly do boob jobs or your gerbil become a  liposuction expert but scientists have found that pets can cure or prevent a whole range of ailments, from depression to heart attacks, and from high blood pressure to various forms of cancer:

This month, a study by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California found that regular exposure to animals could reduce one’s chance of developing the relatively common cancer of the immune system, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, by almost one third.

Another study, conducted at the University of Minnesota and published earlier this year, concluded that cat owners were 40% less likely to suffer a fatal heart attack than people who didn’t have a cat.

So, imagine how healthy our societies would be if all of us would own pets.

Or, if the thought of all the midnight miaowing, the mountains of dog poo and the wails of millions and millions of children over the death of yet another defunct pet is slightly too much to bear, then just spare a thought for those who abandon their dogs in the woods, or throw them into rivers etcetera and rejoice that those sick bastards have thereby increased their chances of dying a gruesome death by a quite substantial factor.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 20:55 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.