Having a pet at home helps people cope with loneliness and brings joy to everyone around them, it reduces unnecessary stress and tension one may be feeling. Pets tend to stimulate a sense of well-being, they bring you love and laughter. Owning furry friends gives us an adequate amount of physical activity to keep ourselves fit, healthy and active. They bring many health benefits to us.
The most common pets people keep are dogs, cats, fish, and birds. Dogs have always been a favorite pet of most people as they are the most faithful, loving, and watchful creatures. They are known as man’s best friends. Being watchful is one of the many benefits of owning a dog. They are great and quick learners and have a great sense of intelligence, for this reason, they are also trained by criminal-investigating agencies to defeat crime and they are very successful in completing their assigned duties or tasks.
Cats are also pretty common pets to people, but in comparison to dogs, cats are less loyal, less loving, and more self-loving creatures. Cats are no doubt lovely creatures and love to cozily sleep on their master’s bed or even snuggle up on their lap.
Owning a pet comes with various responsibilities and is both a pleasure and a task. However, once one gets lured into keeping pets, there is simply no going back. Having a pet has its pros and cons. Some examples of the cons are, there is an increased amount of responsibility, feeding them, walking them at consistent and regular intervals of time. Pets also require maintenance which would also depend on the type of pet and its size. Maintenance of pets can be quite costly when it comes to regular trips to the vet which cannot be ignored as our furry friends need to have their regular checkups like us human beings. We should also be cautious about the kind of food we feed them. Pet food packs a lot of nutrients for pets alone that may not be present in regular food that humans eat, which again, makes it necessary for one to buy appreciated food.
Traveling becomes quite a task to do as you cannot simply leave the pet all by themselves and would need to put them in a dog daycare. If however, one wants to take the pet along with them on a trip, a pet passport, ticket, vaccination card of the pet, etc., would be required.
Disrupted schedule – this may or may not be the case for all. The first few months of owning the pet, especially if it’s a puppy or kitten, could be quite hectic and alter the sleep schedules of some as their behavior is the same as that of a human baby and requires constant attention; they have irregular sleeping patterns in the beginning. However, these disadvantages cease to matter as the months or even years go by as the owners work with the schedule and manage their duties accordingly. At the end of the day, the pros outweigh the cons by a large margin.
By, Geraldine Catherine Kolb, PPM
