Wein, Harrison. “The Power of Pets.” National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 6 Apr. 2020, newsinhealth.nih.gov/2018/02/power-pets.

 

The author used a large amount of experimental data and professional conclusions to support his article. The answer comes largely from HIH and Mars Corporation’s WALTHAM Center for Pet Nutrition’s worked and researched over the past decade. Research has shown that human interaction with animals lowers cortisol levels and lowers blood pressure. This means pets reducing people’s feelings of loneliness, increase feelings of social support and boost people’s mood. Not only that, if you have a dog, you benefit from it. Because you have to walk your dog every day, it will increase your physical activity and promote your physical health. Pets can aid in the treatment of mental illness. “Dogs are very present. If someone is struggling with something, they know how to sit there and be loving,” says Dr. Ann Berger, a physician and researcher at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. “Their attention is focused on the person all the time.” People learn from pets. Mindfulness, a way to help patients decrease stress and manage pain. It includes attention,intention,awareness,etc. And all of these elements are with pets innately. Another study found that children with autism spectrum disorder were calmer while playing with guinea pigs in the classroom. When the children spent 10 minutes in a supervised group playtime with guinea pigs, their anxiety levels dropped. Despite all the benefits of owning a pet, dog bite prevention is a serious problem. Because pets feel stress too, especially the young kids don’t know the boundaries of what’s appropriate to do with dogs. So, people are trying to find out a better way and what’s safe for both humans and animals.

 

The journal was clear and specific. I completely agree with the author’s opinion. Pets do give human positive health effects and helping humans in many territories. Because I do have people around me who have changed their lives after having a pet. They did an experiment. “The first group of kids read to a therapy dog once a week for 30 minutes. The second group read to puppets that looked like dogs. Kids who read to the real animals showed better social skills and more sharing, cooperation, and volunteering. They also had fewer behavioral problems.” It means pets not only reduce the stress for people. Their abilities are much large than that.

I think there is some way to improve the journal. If the author can add a story or told a real-life, tell people how a person got changed by pets. Then this journal will be more attractive, so the reader will curious about what’s next and how could that be. This journal does a great help for my research topic because it fully matches my topic and has basically everything I want. This journal is more like the popularization of science. The author uses many quotes, experimental detail, and experimental conclusions in his journal. All of these are making the journal look more reliable, which increases credibility. The way he writes makes it easy to believe what he says. The audience of this journal might be people who are hesitating to keep a pet or not. Or the students who feel stress. And also patients who need company. This journal may stiffen their resolve.

 

Quotables

“Animals can become a way of building a bridge for those social interactions,” Griffin says. He adds that researchers are trying to better understand these effects and who they might help.

“The first group of kids read to a therapy dog once a week for 30 minutes. The second group read to puppets that looked like dogs. Kids who read to the real animals showed better social skills and more sharing, cooperation, and volunteering. They also had fewer behavioral problems.”