Pets, a companion that comforts the soul

The saying "accompany is the longest confession of love" has almost never failed in describing the emotional landscape between humans and animals. Those lovely creatures that accompany people fully interpret warmth, hope, tolerance, loyalty, and the love that cannot be expressed in words.

In 2009, a movie "Hachiko: A Dog's Story" brought this touching story to the screen. In the movie, university professor Parker adopted an Akita dog and named it "Hachiko". Hachiko would pick up the professor at the station every morning and evening. As time went by, this farewell and waiting became the happiest agreement between them. Until one day, the professor suddenly fell ill at school and passed away. He never returned to the station, but Hachiko still waited outside the station on time every day.

Ten years later, when the professor's wife came to the station, she inadvertently saw Hachiko still waiting for his master to get off work. Although he was old and dirty, he was still waiting persistently until the end of his life.

I believe that every viewer will shed tears after watching this film. Art comes from life. Hachiko: A Dog's Story is not fiction, but adapted from a true story that happened in Japan in 1925. In addition to movies, pet companionship has also become a phenomenon that is gaining more and more attention in modern people's lives.

With the changing times and rapid economic growth, the pace of modern people's lives and work has been constantly fast-forwarded. People trapped in cities are in urgent need of an emotional outlet, and the purpose of keeping pets has gradually changed from entertainment to spiritual sustenance at the psychological level. Pets are increasingly playing the role of people's life partners.

The 2019 China Pet Industry White Paper shows that in 2019, the number of pet dogs and cats in urban areas nationwide reached 99.15 million, an increase of 8.2% over 2018. In the same year, the number of pet owners in urban areas nationwide reached 61.2 million, an increase of 4.72 million over the previous year. First-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are still the main cities for pet raising, and the post-90s generation has become the "main force" of pet raising. For these young people, pets are a safe haven to temporarily escape from the pressure of work and life, and are also the sustenance of their love.

A Swedish study on the relationship between pet ownership and health showed that dog ownership can significantly reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease in people. One of the reasons is that dog ownership can reduce social isolation, depression, loneliness and other social and psychological stress factors, which are positively correlated with the increase of coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease. At the same time, dog ownership can also make pet owners passively engage in more physical activities such as dog walking, improving their physical fitness.

Studies have shown that keeping pets can relieve people's negative emotions and help them recover health faster. Among them, "animal-assisted therapy" has become an effective method for treating various mental illnesses such as depression, autism and Alzheimer's disease.

Research has found that "animal-assisted therapy" can promote autistic children to establish sincere emotional experiences with animals, which will eventually be generalized in the process of establishing emotions with the people around them. Children can reduce their sense of alienation and improve their social interaction behaviors to a certain extent when interacting with therapy dogs. When getting along with pet dogs, autistic children take on a mother-like role in caring for animals by feeding their pets, cleaning up their feces, bathing them, etc., which also helps to cultivate children's sense of responsibility and trust. Not only that, "animal-assisted therapy" can also promote the reading skills and language cognition abilities of autistic children.

A related study in Hong Kong and Taiwan also found an interesting phenomenon: whether it is autistic children or elderly people with Alzheimer's disease, the first word many people say after breaking the silence during their constant interaction with dogs is "dog".

The existence of pets fills the gap in the inner world of modern urbanites and helps "empty nesters" resolve loneliness. They are not only our relatives and friends, but also a good medicine that warms and heals our hearts that yearn for love and to be loved.

(The author is an engineer at the Exhibition Design Center of the China Science and Technology Museum)