France has 63 million pets … Which brings a lot of joy. Companion, guardian, but also medical assistant. At all stages of life
Let’s start the family life of a pet at the end… This is a problem that general practitioners are well aware of. It is indeed not uncommon for a brave grandmother to persist in her desire to stay at home, when her state of health would require her to join a specialized institution, quite simply because next to her bed, there is his cat or his dog.
If the unbearable separation from his pet, we can consider allowing them in retirement homes and many institutions have taken the plunge, even if for reasons of hygiene or fear, the staff were often resolutely against … But it is true that these tests, even if it requires adjustments, have made these retirement homes much more humane.
Medical assistant
The medical profession is aware of the importance of a pet in the life of some of their patients. In particular psychiatrists – First, indeed, in the elderly, because before being present near the armchair and the bed, it is especially an excellent way to impose the few minutes of daily walk which we know that ‘they are fundamental to delay the loss of autonomy.
In case of mental handicap
Nothing equals the patience of the animal to avoid the withdrawal into oneself, the lack of understanding of the world of others. For example, some children who have difficulty articulating a few words find a motivation to learn the simple commands that life with a dog requires. Without trivializing the disease, the presence of an animal at their side spontaneously attracts a sympathy which helps a little – there is nothing miraculous – but a little all the same, the exchange with the others. “
It remains very anecdotal, but, birds, horses, fish against stress, monkeys for the paralyzed, dolphins for the autistic, everything has been tried at the risk of seeing long-stay hospitals or psychiatric institutes turn into menagerie, but without much success.
Man’s best friend is the dog
We can no longer count the positive experiences in psychiatry, especially in children. It is the companion of loneliness, often the last passion of old people for whom separation is often a tragedy. A dog is able to memorize more than 50 simple commands. He is a real medical assistant. There are unfortunately only a few hundred in France while the physically disabled who could benefit from it are several tens of thousands.
The story of Mary and Vasco
Marie is a woman … who suffers from a very frequent disease, an insulin-dependent diabetes which requires insulin injections.
Vasco is an animal… which belongs to the breed which walks on all fours, it is a small English cocker spaniel.
Marie’s diabetes is very hard to balance and she has hypoglycemia all the time, those horrible discomforts that give the impression of fainting and usually ends in a loss of consciousness if you do not intervene early enough. But in Marie these discomforts occur most often at night, during her sleep and she was therefore obliged to wake up every hour to check that her blood sugar did not drop too much.
Vasco was trained to detect these famous drops in blood sugar. He comes twice a night, sniffing out his mistress and waking her up if he detects hypoglycemia odors. And today Marie can finally spend quite correct nights.
Experiments with truffle screening in dogs is booming. The detection of prostate cancer is a very impressive example.
.