One in every four Spanish households dog at home, According to statistics, it is an animal whose existence has increased “significantly” as a result of the quarantines implemented during the pandemic, and which celebrates Earth Day this Thursday.
Isabel Buil, director of the Affinity Foundation, told Efe that this is how it was estimated today. There are 6 million dogs in Spain and most of them are loved by their owners.74% of people living with these animals claimed to experience “better confinement” because their pets “helped them cope with social distancing and feel less alone.”
Being close to a dog “fills us with a rewarding feeling and elevates our mood, something not accidental”, Buil approves, because this animal “makes a huge emotional contribution and is a motivator for many people’s lives.”
In fact, there is scientific evidence confirming this. contact with animals “activates hormones related to pleasure and well-being.like oxytocin, and reduces stress-related ones like cortisol in addition to blood pressure,” said Maribel Vila, who is an expert in canine behavior and animal-assisted therapies.
According to this expert, the physical and psychological benefits they provide include: educational and social development of minors to help the elderly, the sick or other groups as “mediators of socialization, reintegration and health improvement” with special needs.
this animal assisted therapy Vila explained that in this way he aims to “help improve people’s lives” with the help of dogs as a therapeutic resource on “physical, cognitive, emotional and relational” levels.
Dedicated to educating and disseminating knowledge with scientific rigor about the bond between humans and dogs since 2013, the Affinity Foundation is working on various projects, such as preventing bullying, in training centers.
According to their work, 94% of children say they feel better with an animaland, according to Buil, “the vast majority say they’ll spend their time caring for it and even stop playing with their friends to be with their pets.”
When it comes to elderly people, dogs help them. overcoming feelings of loneliness and doing psychomotricity exercises and in hospitals, its use is “very effective” for people with communication, motivation, attention and concentration difficulties, low self-esteem, eating disorders and even mental illness.
There are also some reintegration projects in prisons and sheltered centers for minors where they help express and manage emotions, control anger or improve treatment of others.
This happens because “A dog does not judge, accepts us as we are and therefore does not abandon us.What makes it an animal, which makes it a tremendous “facilitator” of this type of therapy,” points out Vila.
Despite “all this positive evidence,” there are still restrictions on renting a home, entering a local place, or going on vacation with a pet, which the therapist finds “unacceptable.”
Regarding abandonment data, up to 285,000 dogs and cats reached shelters last year, and Buil thinks “there is still a lot to be done” even though “for the first time, more than 50% of the collected animals have been collected”. It has been adopted with a 90% success rate in adoptions, showing that “the animals are resilient, the shelters are doing a good job and the community is thriving”.
World Dog Day has been celebrated in homage to “man’s best friend” since 2004, but there are other dates dedicated to it, such as the day to bring the dog into the office – June 21 – and international stray dog day – last Sunday in July. – or the day of the adopted dog -September 23-.