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| The Responsible Pet Owner/Ask Aunt Martha…Taking a Time-Out with Pets |
Most of us sprint from one place to another trying to get everything done in a day that never seems to have enough hours in it. Finding time to relax and enjoy ourselves can often seem like a starry-eyed wish. During even the busiest of days though, we can easily take a few moments to connect with ourselves by looking to our pets for help.
Taking a simple time-out to relax and enjoy ourselves with our animal companions can bring a sense of calm to any hectic day. For kids, time-outs with pets can alleviate a hairy situation swiftly, calmly and with a positive feeling that can last throughout the day.
Enjoyable moments with pets offer positive benefits like, lowering stress levels, decreasing blood pressure values and increasing psychological wellness. During a busy day, both adults and children can look to their pets to help them slow down even if it’s for a ten minute break. These short breaks during the course of the day can also help re-focus us so that we can catch a second wind. It’s always important to find small pleasing ways to relax—even our pets get tired of watching us run ragged!
We’ve had many questions on the value of taking time-outs with our pets lately and hope these tips are helpful!
Pet Your Pet
For adults and children who need a little pick me up break, pets can offer to soothe the mind. By sitting quietly and gently stroking a pet, we feel an immediate sense of calmness. For our pets, they soak up the love and attention. Relaxation is just as contagious as anxiety is. Our anxious feelings are slowed when we see how relaxed our pets are. The repetitive action of petting an animal’s fur has been shown to reduce stress levels.
Let Your Pet Hypnotize You
Sitting and watching a pet breathe, sleep, or swim (in the case of fish), is another way that repetitive actions can help us relax and feel calm. Anytime we watch the same movement, like a pet snoozing away, as their body moves up and down with each breath, we connect with that motion. By watching the motion of their bodies as they sleep or snore, it’s easy to loose ourselves in their calm spirit. Every type of pet can offer the same calming hypnotic motion. Birds fluff their feathers, fish slowly swim in the water, cats clean their fur and hamsters and gerbils fidget in their homes. All of these repetitive movements when we watch them for a period of time, have been shown to be somewhat hypnotic and very calming to a human’s busy brain or stressed body.
Ask Your Pet to be a Buddy
Parents, who have an overactive child, can find quiet and peace by asking their pet to buddy up with them and their parenting responsibilities. Every parent knows that the occasional time-out is going to be necessary in order to bring peace back to their day. Pets can help with these time-outs by making them positive. Pet buddies can serve parents by being there when a youngster needs some down time. Parents get the benefit of a moment of peace to re-group and re-focus while their child is bonding. Children can buddy up with their pets to help them too. Kids who have well-trained animal companions nearby, can look to their pets as trusted friends. Petting and quietly watching a pet can make any time a good time. For kids, pets serve as someone they can trust and count on, no matter what their circumstances are. When times get tough, children have been known to feel more comfortable around their pets than with other people.
Pets serve our families in so many ways, and keeping them in the loop as an active member of the household promotes a natural human-pet bond with all family members. Anytime a trusted friend is needed – we can count on our pets to be there for us. Supervised time-outs with kids and pets and calming hypnotic moments with our animals are some of the wonderful ways that our animal companions remind us of how valuable they are to bringing peace into our daily lives.