Dog, cat and health

It is well known that dogs and cats can suffer from colds just like humans. In addition, there is a range of "species-specific diseases that are quite life-threatening for our pets, but which are not transmitted to humans. As with us humans, bumps, bleary eyes or sneezing fits not infrequently culminate in a visit to the doctor's office to have the animal treated. Anyone familiar with the interior of veterinary practices knows that a visit to the vet is not an inexpensive affair and can often become a financial burden. Quite a few pensioners are faced with the problem of having to spend several hundred euros on treatment, even though they will certainly do their best to pay for it before they let their "darling" suffer. In the meantime, there are health insurances for dogs which, like for us humans, cover the primary costs of standard treatments in whole or in part and stabilise medical care considerably. Whether and to what extent the premiums of such insurances burden the sometimes very tight pensions depends solely on the insurer. It is important to clarify any pre-existing conditions and the physical condition of the animal, which can affect the premiums. Such insurances also make sense almost exclusively for animals that tend to be "sickly" and whose visits to the doctor repeatedly throw the owner's financial budget over the edge.

Although dogs and cats can die from kidney failure, viral infections are not usually transmitted from humans to animals. One of the few exceptions could be the currently rampant COVID-19 pandemic, after some reports that dogs have also tested positive for the virus. However, as these reports are not accumulating, the risk to pets is expected to be very manageable.

Pets play a much more important role in the treatment of our diseases. Owners of dogs and cats will quickly be able to confirm that their animals "seek closeness" as soon as their owners are ill or suffering from pain. In the case of cats, experts also believe that the purring of the cat is said to have a "healing" effect, as the purring is in the range of 7.83 Hz; a frequency that is found in many places in nature.

Dogs are a little more active and serve as guide dogs for visually impaired people or as "household help" for people with physical disabilities, for whom dogs then open drawers or doors or perform other delivery services.

Quite often, however, the mere presence of dogs or cats is enough to notice a "therapy effect" in sick people. Especially in the case of lonely elderly people or mental illnesses, animals can help to give the old or sick person back a little courage to face life. Horses or even dolphins have also been used for therapy, leading sick people out of the mire of their illness and into a special experience. Since elderly people in care facilities are usually not allowed to keep pets, volunteers can be found who pick up dogs from animal shelters to "drop by" in care homes. Very often, the residents of such facilities are very happy about such visits and gain a lot of variety from the often monotonous and lonely everyday life.

Animals do not always meet with unlimited approval in the city. Until a few years ago, landlords still had the option of refusing to let a flat if a dog or cat was to move in with them. In the meantime, the tenants' association has succeeded in undermining this "law" to the extent that a landlord must in principle agree to at least one pet, or may not refuse the tenant the flat because of a dog or cat.

In the case of cats, the landlords' justification referred to an "odour nuisance" and in the case of dogs, primarily to the noise caused by barking.

In practice, this wrangling has largely subsided and nowadays tenants will encounter little headwind as soon as they decide to take a dog or a cat into their city flat.

The fact that not every fellow citizen is enthusiastic about pets can unfortunately also be gathered from media reports again and again, in which regional warnings are issued that (once again) poison baits or similar food traps have been laid out somewhere in order to poison or injure dogs or cats. People who do such things may also be described by animal rights activists less as pet opponents than as mentally disturbed people who are basically not harmless. However, pet owners should definitely take such warnings in the press seriously. There is absolutely no lack of cruelty in the baits that have actually been placed and found so far. In addition to poisons, the criminals do not shy away from placing baits with needles, nails or razor blades, which would cause life-threatening and painful injuries to the animals.

The evolutionary story for our future with dogs and cats has not yet been written. However, it does not appear that the population of these animals in our cities will drastically decrease in the near future. Likewise, the bond between humans and animals will hardly diminish or wane in the future. On the contrary. The positive "effect" is not only apparent in old and lonely people. Children also grow up to be far more "empathetic" people as soon as they have been surrounded by a pet in their childhood and youth.

It is to be hoped that the "companion industry" on the way to a common future for humans and animals will put less "nonsense" on the market, which ultimately only has the goal of pulling money out of pet owners' pockets in the belief that they have done their animal a favour. Whether these "products" are possibly sensible insurance policies, completely pointless carnival costumes for cats or even sillier TV channels for dogs that are home alone for a longer period of time: what is important besides all these things is an honest and intimate relationship between animal and human, or as a single artist once aptly put it: "I live alone in a rather cosy flat. However, my cat, which waits in the hallway for my return when I come home, is what makes this otherwise empty flat a home."

Unfortunately, we live in a society where it is not uncommon for people to die lonely and abandoned in their homes and only be discovered weeks or months later, after a neighbour has noticed that a letterbox has not been emptied since Michaelmas or that there is a "strong smell" in the stairwell. Such deaths become truly tragic at the moment when pets are in the flat with the dying person, who is facing a slow death by starvation and dying of thirst. Pathologists know of wild animals eating corpses of people who have died "in the woods" and eating them as carrion. Dogs and cats behave in a very similar way, as they will begin to eat their dead owners in the distress of an empty bowl. For a long time there was a debate between dog and cat owners in which dog owners claimed that loyal dogs would never eat their owners ... this could at best be said of these already arrogant and callous cats. In practice, unfortunately, it has already been proven that both types of animals resort to this emergency ration as soon as there is no one left to fill the bowl and the owner obviously does not mind if the animal eats its face. It goes without saying that such animals are then picked up by the shelter, but are not handed over to a new family, but are euthanised.

For various breeds of dogs it is physically no problem to attack and also kill people. In the rarest of cases, such murderousness is directed against the dog's own owners, as the dog recognises the owner as the "alpha animal" and subordinates itself in every way. Nevertheless, it has happened several times that dogs have attacked, seriously injured and even killed their owners or family members. Not infrequently, such attacks were preceded by mistreatment, so that the animals' attacks were in fact intended to be defended as "self-defence". In one case, a Rottweiler injured its drunken owner so severely in the head that the owner died. The whole thing happened when the drunk tried to enter his property and the dog apparently did not recognise him because of the smell of alcohol.

In Flensburg, an elderly lady was "executed" by her 10 cats a few years ago, after the completely neglected animals had been deprived of food and beaten for several days.

The real plus point that dog owners can claim for themselves is the fact that dogs mourn the passing of their "master" far longer than cats. Dogs lie for days on the grave of their masters or visibly wait for their "return" to their ancestral places. Cats do the same, but less persistently. With cats it can be noticed that they lie down on the places where their masters "usually" sat or lay. Such a search can also be observed in cats as soon as a family member is "only" away from home for a fortnight. While dogs are quite happy to accept an entire family as their "master", cats tend to form a close bond with one family member. There are also dog breeds with these characteristics. So if you have a family with children, make sure you get a "family dog" that accepts multiple owners rather than dogs that place all their loyalty on the "head of the family" and see other family members as potential intruders.