Pet Stories
Human-Animal Bond
By enabling pets to live longer, healthier and happier lives,
The Animal Medical Center helps to preserve and protect
the human-animal bond
The bond between people and their pets is a powerful dynamic that offers countless health benefits to both. At The Animal Medical Center, we strive to preserve and protect this special relationship so that together, people and their pets can live longer, healthier, and happier lives.
What is the Human-Animal Bond?
If you have or know of anyone with pets, you may recognize how central they are to people’s lives. More and more folks agree that they share a unique relationship with their pets, and consider them as bona fide family members. This special bond between people and their pets is called the human-animal bond. It represents a mutually beneficial relationship that goes beyond simple companionship to provide real health benefits for both.
The Remarkable and Mutual Benefits of Pets!
The positive impact of the human-animal bond is significant. We often hear stories about pets seemingly reading their owners’ minds, or knowing when they’re happy or sad and offering comfort. But pets do much more than that: they help children learn to be more responsible and empathic, and help seniors feel less lonely and depressed. And service animals, such as hearing dogs for people who are deaf, guide dogs for people who are blind, and animals used in pet-therapy, provide many more essential benefits.
At the same time that our pets help us, we are able to do good things for them as well. When a person pets a dog, not only does the person’s heart rate slow and blood pressure drop, but so does the animal's. This demonstrates the mutual benefit of the human-animal bond. Below are some other examples.
Physical Benefits
Anyone with a pet knows that they make our lives more active. We have to walk dogs, change birdcages and empty litter boxes. This additional activity helps to make both the owner and pet healthier.
Physiological Benefits
Living with a pet provides great physiological benefits. Petting a dog or cat or even watching a fish tank can lower a person’s blood pressure and reduce their anxiety and stress. Generally, people with pets are less prone to minor colds and illnesses and have lower cholesterol.
Social Benefits
Pets provide countless social benefits. They offer unconditional love and companionship, and make people feel less lonely and isolated. They provide a sense of security and help to increase social interactions by breaking down barriers.
Psychological and Emotional Benefits
There is no question about a pet’s ability to provide emotional and psychological benefits. Pets help people laugh, fight depression and loneliness and promote an interest in life. When people face adversity or trauma, their bond with their pet helps to lift their spirits, improve morale and distract them from worries. Many people with pets have higher self-esteem and feel a greater sense of well-being.
Throughout The AMC’s nearly century-long history, we have worked to preserve and protect this powerful bond between people and their pets. From collaborating with human research institutions to generate new knowledge in human and veterinary medicine; to launching one of the first veterinary internship programs in the country; to sponsoring the nation’s first conference on pet loss and founding the Carola Warburg Rothschild Society for the Human-Animal Bond – our efforts revolve around our mission of delivering excellent health care to companion animals in order to keep them with their families as long as possible – thus defending the human-animal bond.
Our Services
- Counsel individuals and groups whose pets are ill or have died
- Refer clients to selected therapists for long-term individual counseling
- Visit disabled, elderly, troubled individuals living or studying in institutions, with our own healthy, carefully screened pets and volunteers
- Train, consult with and offer personal support to all members of the veterinary team to increase sensitivity and client relations skill and to reduce stress
- Train social work masters students, who for two semesters, counsel clients, work collaboratively with all members of the veterinary team and develop new programs to assist clients and staff
- Advance society's understanding of human-animal interaction through lectures to practitioners throughout the country, scholarly articles and our own research
- Serve as a resource to those seeking information, planning research or beginning new programs, e.g., the media, graduate students or university departments