Naminių gyvūnėlių laikymo sąsajos su įvairiais žmogaus gyvenimo aspektais
Link between Keeping Pets and Various Aspects of Human Life

Summary/Abstract: Recently the term “pet-companion” has come into wide use as an alternative to “adoptee”, thus clearly underlining the difference between our connection to domestic animals kept for economic reasons, and pets chosen to be taken into the family and hearts. Apart from simply keeping an adoptee, many pet-companion owners create some specific link with them, analogous to human-human link. There are reasons to think that pet-companions usually take the place of a friend of the owner (Hirschman, 1994). Pet-companions are also often described as family members (Voith, 1985) or even surrogate brothers, sisters or children (Sanders, 1990; Hirschman, 1994). Finally, pet-companions help to gain confidence, autonomy, responsibility, competence and empathy towards others (Beck, Katcher, 1996). The advantages of keeping pets include health development and disease prevention, mentioned in the program Healthy People 2000. These points include: 1) enchanced physical activity and 2) improved mental health and prevention of mental disorders (Jennings, 1997). Research where links between pets and humans are analysed also include other areas and variables. Having analysed scientific literature the authors focus on pet keeping link to such human life aspects as physical and mental health, social aspect and pet therapy.

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