Study after study confirms that owning a pet, especially a dog or cat, offers health benefits. Researchers recently reviewed a pile of studies and concluded that indeed, there’s a mental health benefit when you care for a dog or cat—and a slight dip when they get ill and pass.
Your pets are giving you a boost, so give them one in return. Support their health needs, and you just might get an even bigger return on the benefits of pet ownership.
Start with the same basics you would for a human. Both dogs and cats need healthy nutrition, exercise, and good sleep.
You don’t have to buy the fanciest pet food, you can even make your own with consultation from your vet. The big food risk to pet health is table scraps. Not only can it be the wrong sort of nutrition for pets, it may train them to be entitled to/overly interested in human food, exposing them to types of food and packaging that may damage their health. Vets have recently said that the habit of giving (dogs, in particular) table scraps is causing a pet obesity and cutting short their lives. Focusing on pet nutrition may even help you to think about your own, but at the very least it may give you more time with your furry friends.
Then there’s exercise. Pets need it for health and happiness same as humans. Doing it together can motivate you, make it more fun, and even boost that mental health uptick that comes with owning a pet.
Exercise even helps with the last healthpoint, sleep. Anxiety can really impact a pets sleep. Exercise helps, but so does proper training so that every squirrel and bump in the night doesn’t cause a start (or wear them down during the day with stress).
If you want to do a little more to help your pets, add a little colloidal silver (a drop or two) to their water bottles. Cats, especially outside cats, are at risk for diseases from other cats. Dogs, too, are at risk, and can even catch their own flu strain, which is spreading around this season just like the human epidemic.
Pets give us so much, and it’s easy to give a little back. Colloidal silver is an easy place to start, especially if you already have some!
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