Children and dogs : friends for life

Keeping a pet dog can enrich children’s life and help them build a sense of self-esteem and responsibility and develop diversified interests.
Friends for life
Children love to live and play with dogs by nature. They tend to treat pets as their closest friends, or even as their brothers and sisters. They like to play with pets, share their secrets with them and find comfort and consolidation in them. Besides, pet dogs make children feel secure in their life.
Many children with a pet have this similar experience: when they have received unjust treatment from others, they would rather retreat to their pets to pull out their sufferings and obtain comfort from the latter. Pets have become a most valuable source of confidence and friendship for children. That is why we often hear children to say: “My dog is my best friend”. Psychologists attribute the close relationship between children and pets to the “non-discriminating faith” on the part of pets. Pets will offer their unconditional love and care for their little owners, no matter how they have performed at the school or whether they have done something wrong. When children meet with any troubles or defeats, their pets will help them recover from psychological injuries and regain confidence.
Pets provide many learning opportunities for children
Children learn many things about natural sciences, life sciences in particular, when they live together with a pet. They learn important things about mother nature and life itself through interacting with pets. For example, they get exposed to the cycle of birth, growth and reproduction and they learn various little behavioural lessons by watching their pets responses and reactions. Pets serve as an encyclopaedia to younger children. Through playing with, feeding, training and caring for pets, children become aware of all the happy as well as tough moments that one experiences during growth, and  thus learns to respect all life forms.
Pet ownership helps children get more socially integrated
When you observe children playing with their pets you see how excited and enthusiastic they look. This is more than enough to realise the importance of pets in children’s social life; by giving more confidence to those who are withdrawn and also because children with pets have more chances to make new friends . Pets can also create more opportunities for family members to communicate with each other. By helping little ones taking care of pets, adult members in a family may share with their kids the happiness brought up by pet ownership. Pets, therefore, can serve as the “goodwill ambassador” in a household.
A recent study on pet ownership by children by researchers in Cambridge University finds out that the more pets a child keeps, the greater communication capacity the child will have. Their findings also point out that pet ownership is conducive to creating a more harmonious family environment between parents and their children.
A happy childhood is important for a child to grow into a responsible citizen. Keeping a pet helps children develop a rounded personality by bringing them a happier and more fun filled life and teaches them about love and care for their family, society and nature.