Welcome to SFDOG | The Joy and Benefits of Dogs

The Joy and Benefits of Dogs
Dogs provide numerous benefits to society and provide humans with a vast number of physical and psychological health benefits. Simply petting a dog will lower both your heart rate and your blood pressure. Dogs offer physical and emotional health benefits to seniors. Dogs' companionship helps people better deal with the stress of everyday life.

A recent study found that people who walked with a dog lost more weight than people who walked alone or with another person. Children who spend the first year of their life in homes with two or more dogs have significantly fewer allergies than do children who grow up with no pets. Teachers report that children with reading problems who take part in a program where they read books aloud to dogs significantly increase their reading abilities and gain self-confidence and self-esteem.

Dogs with People at Fort Funston Dogs Playing with Children

Humans and dogs began a symbiotic relationship over 20,000 years ago. Dogs were first used as hunting companions and they have been an intregal part of human socitey ever since, having a dramatic impact on the history and development of the human species and human society. Dogs continue to guard and herd livestock.

Service dogs help blind, deaf, and disabled people by giving the physical and psychological support necessary to achieve more functional independence. Patients in hospitals and nursing homes frequently require less pain medication after visits by therapy dogs. Search-and-rescue dogs find lost and injured people (and pets). Crisis-response dogs comforted people grieving for missing loved ones at municipal assistance centers in New York City in the days after September 11th. Military dogs are credited with saving 10,000 US and allied lives during the Vietnam War.

Castro Dogs Playing with Little Girl

Dogs help police find illegal drugs, bombs, and search for the chemical precursors to weapons of mass destruction in trucks and shipping containers. Dogs have even shown the ability to detect cancer in humans and can be effective "seizure alerts" for people prone to seizures. Dogs also help teach prision inmates crucial life-skills such as responsibility, patience, tolerance, respect for others, while learning (and recieving) compassion and love.

Dogs do all this for us - and more - and ask for little in return. The bonds we share make us want to give our canine friends the best that we can. And that includes plenty of good off-leash exercise and play.