The Health Benefits Of Dog Ownership
A scientific statement published in Circulation, the ingeniously named medical journal of the American Heart Association, says that owning a dog might confer numerous cardiovascular benefits, such as reducing blood pressure, improving cholesterol, and lowering the risk of heart disease.1The name of the journal is ingenious because “circulation” not only has to do with the movement of blood throughout the body, which the heart is responsible for and is what the American Heart Association concerns itself with, but the word also has to do with the distributed number of copies of a publication, which the journal so happens to be. Genius, I tell ya!!!
…but ownership isn’t enough.
Yeah, you have to actually be the one who gets off their ass and walks the motherfucker so it doesn’t piss and shit all over the priceless oriental rug you brought home from your journey to the mystical land of IKEA, as dog owners who walk their dogs get more physical activity and are less likely to be obese than people who don’t own dogs or pass the responsibility of dog walking off to their children.2Or instead of passing the responsibility off to their kids, they hire a dog walker because they’re so stinkin’ rich they can afford to pay someone to walk their fucking dog for them instead of exploiting free child labor like your broke ass is apparently wont to do. Hey, I’m not knocking you! Fuck, other than for acting as slaves at your beck and call, what other purpose do kids serve?!?! Exactly, NONE!!!
It’s the increased physical activity from dog walking that helps lower blood pressure, elevate HDL (“good”) cholesterol and reduce LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, and lower the incidence of obesity, all of which play a factor in the prevention of heart disease.
Overall, dog owners tend to get more regular exercise than non-owners, resulting in better cardiovascular health scores that can be attributed solely to dog ownership itself.
Hmmmmm…
But then again, maybe the better cardiovascular scores can be attributed to the possibility that people with healthy tickers are just more likely to own dogs than people with unhealthy tickers.
Sure, that is indeed a possibility but no one in their right mind would come to that conclusion because where’s the fun in not implying causation from correlation?!?!3Exactly, there is no fun!!! And that’s why you never drinking water is brilliant on account of the irrefutable fact that 100 percent of the people who drink the stuff die. Ooooooooh, you so smart!
Unless you’re some ancient Egyptian cat worshiping weirdo who should be dead like all the other ancient Egyptian cat worshiping weirdos, everyone knows dogs are better than cats, with this statement from the American Heart Association providing another in the long line of reasons why.
But now, before you run out to adopt, rescue, or purchase a dog for the primary purpose of reaping the health benefits of dog ownership, that’s…ummmmm…kinda not the primary purpose of adopting, rescuing, or purchasing a dog!
Also, simply adopting, rescuing, or purchasing a dog to walk and then reap the benefits from doing so without giving a fuck about other primary and secondary interventions for the risk reduction of heart disease, such as following a healthy diet, is…ummmmm…kinda stupid!!!
