Pet Therapy and Senior Care Part II

Pet Therapy and Senior Care Part II

This is a continuation of a series of articles concerning the many benefits that animal therapy can bring in senior care.

Emotional Benefits

For seniors who are often hungry for companionship, pets can offer the possibility of a satisfying relationship. Perhaps one of the toughest things that seniors have to face is losing connections with people who have helped shaped and touched their lives in very significant ways. While it may be hard to build new relationships with other humans, it will be much easier to connect with pets, which always have a way of penetrating the defenses even of the most reserved seniors. Aside from companionship, here are some of the emotional benefits that pets can provide seniors:

• Animals can offer seniors care and gentleness because they are born with an instinct to nurture sick humans.
• Seniors have an increased self-esteem when caring for a pet or when they see it enjoying their presence.
• By building a nurturing bond with their pets, seniors have reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.
• By having a pet to care for and spend time with it, seniors have reduced loneliness.
• Seniors with pets have a higher social interaction rate than those without one.
• When with their pets, seniors experience greater comfort levels when they’re visiting other family members.
• Pets can listen to their owners and provide support to them. By simply holding their pets, seniors receive great comfort. Often seniors keep too much of their burdens to themselves, perhaps out of fear that others will overreact or be overburdened, but comforting animals can fill out human listeners and are known to relieve anxiety and stress among seniors.
• Dogs have the distinctive ability to show affection and concern to their owners. It’s possible that seniors have many concerned people surrounding them, but most humans are not experts when it comes to showing their concern in pleasant ways. Pets, however, are more adept at showing their feelings, which are most often genuine and non-threatening.

Mental Benefits

• Pet therapy can stimulate seniors’ ability to remember or memorize things.
• Contacting other animal handlers or being engaged in an animal entertainment can produce mental stimulation.
• Having a pet can boost the over-all mental well-being of seniors.