Dogs Are Better Pets Than Cats
Good evening, I am here to convince you that dogs are better pets than cats. My three main points are: 1. Research has shown when it comes to intelligence, dogs out rank cats. 2. A dog will never try to talk you out of taking a walk. 3. Dogs are not only great companions but in some circumstances, can save your life. My first major point is that research has shown when it comes to intelligence, dogs out rank cats. Although you wouldn’t want your dog to balance your checkbook, research has shown that dogs can count.
According to Stanley Coren, PhD, of the University of British Columbia, they can also understand more than 150 words and intentionally deceive other dogs and people to get treats. According to several behavioral measures, Coren says dogs’ mental abilities are close to a human child age 2 to 2. 5 years. In 2004, German researchers reported that a border collie named Rico could learn the name of an object in one try and remembered them all a month later. In other studies, dogs as young as six weeks old showed amazing ability for understanding human expressions such as finger pointing or gazing at certain objects.
Juliane Kaminski of the Mac Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology says “When it comes to understanding human behavior, no mammal comes even close to a dog”. My second major point is that a dog will never try to talk you out of taking a walk, so you are going to get more exercise. According to an article in the New York Times, if you are looking for the latest in home exercise equipment, you may want to consider something with four legs and a wagging tail. An August 2010 article in the Orlando Sentinel stated that Walking and running are the easiest exercise activities, and they’re among the most healthful.
Dogs need to be walked, and they love to run. Within these facts is a match made in wellness heaven. Last year the University of Missouri did a 12 week study of 54 older adults at an assisted-living home. Some people selected a friend or spouse as a walking companion, while others took a bus daily to a local animal shelter where they were assigned a dog to walk. The researchers found that the dog walkers showed a much greater improvement in fitness while the human walkers began to make excuses to skip the workout. They were regularly discouraging each other from walking.
Missouri is a hot state and they would hear them saying “It’s hot today. I don’t want to walk, do you”? The response from the dog walking group was very different. They bounced off the bus and said “Where’s my dog? ” and the dogs never gave any discouragement from walking. My third major point is dogs are not only great companions but in some circumstances can save your life. The New York Times recently had an article on a Laberdoodle named Jet, who lives in New Jersey. He is both a seizure alert dog and a psychiatric service dog whose owner has epilepsy, severe anxiety, depression, various phobias and hypoglycemia.
Jet has been trained to anticipate seizures, panic attacks and plunging blood sugar and will alert his owner to these things by staring intently at her until she does something about the problem. He will drop a toy in her lap to snap her out of a dissociative state. If she has a seizure, he will position himself so that his body is under her head to cushion a fall. At the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University in Tallahassee, scientists have trained dogs to detect the odor of skin melanomas and prostate cancer.
In 2008, researchers at the Pine Street Foundation in Northern California reported that they had taught dogs to pinpoint patients with lung cancer simply by smelling their breath. Intelligent, great exercise companions, and perhaps able to save your life! Dogs truly are man’s best friend!! Again, I have just explained to you why dogs are better pets than cats. My three major points are: 1. Research has shown when it comes to intelligence, dogs out rank cats. 2. A dog will never try to talk you out of taking a walk. 3. Dogs are not only great companions but in certain circumstances can save your life.
