Dogs May Help Keep Us Sane

28 Jan Dogs May Help Keep Us Sane

If you’ve come to our site looking for raccoon hunting supplies for training, like a Dogtra Collar, you may have a young raccoon dog on your hands that is making you crazy. Don’t give up on her! Given time, you’re going to have a great dog on your hands. And on top of that, while she’s making you crazy in the short term, in the long term, scientific research has shown that sometimes dogs can help keep people from developing certain mental health problems.

“A study from Johns Hopkins Medicine s suggests that being around ‘man’s best friend’ from an early age may have a health benefit as well — lessening the chance of developing schizophrenia as an adult,” Science Daily reports.

More Than a Hunting Companion

There’s already been plenty of research done on the benefits of having a dog as a kid. They can help build up a child’s immune system, reduce their risk of developing allergies and help them deal with all kinds of stress.

The new research is interesting because it looks at specific mental health issues. “Serious psychiatric disorders have been associated with alterations in the immune system linked to environmental exposures in early life, and since household pets are often among the first things with which children have close contact, it was logical for us to explore the possibilities of a connection between the two,” Robert Yolken, M.D., chair of the Stanley Division of Pediatric Neurovirology and professor of neurovirology in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and lead author of a research paper recently posted online in the journal PLOS One, is quoted as saying in Science Daily.

Science Daily goes on to say, “In the study, Yolken and colleagues at Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore investigated the relationship between exposure to a household pet cat or dog during the first 12 years of life and a later diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. For schizophrenia, the researchers were surprised to see a statistically significant decrease in the risk of a person developing the disorder if exposed to a dog early in life. Across the entire age range studied, there was no significant link between dogs and bipolar disorder, or between cats and either psychiatric disorder.”

They’ll need to do more research before they make any definitive claims, but it’s a really interesting start, don’t you think? And there’s not enough data to justify getting rid of the cat yet, either, so don’t even go there.

We don’t have any fancy studies to quote from, but we do know a lot about raccoon hunting. So, if you need help determining what raccoon hunting supplies you need, whether you’re shopping for a Garmin Alpha combo or a Petsafe in-ground fence, give us a call (252) 795-5000.