Professor Howard Herzog, from Western Carolina University Psychology Department, commenced a research, which studied the influence of pets on the human life. The results that researcher Herzog has derived at is a bit hodgepodge and contradictory.
Various researchers have identified owning pets resulted in benefitting the health of the owners. Like the research carried out in 1980 claimed that owning pets increased life expectancy among owners by 4 times. Another research conducted by the Miami University Ohio, reveals that pet owners possessed a better health, confidence, were careful and social. Also, a research by Michigan researchers claimed an improvement in health of dog owners by 34%, in comparison to the ones who did not own one.
The researcher emphasized on the contradictory study, which claimed that pet owners were at a higher risk of heart attack and the consequences could be worse resulting in death of the owner. The study also notified the diseases that pets brought with them like skin mites, worms, salmonellosis, giardia and other parasites, which had adverse effect on human health.
Researcher Herzog stressed in the study published in Current Directions in Psychological Science that pets had a positive effect on children suffering with autism. He further recommended that a scientific approach should be led in order to derive at the benefits of owning a pet.
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