Dogs and daily rhythm

So I have a dog. Lite Shiba demon and if you keep reading you will even get to see him. 😉

Why am I talking about him?
Because having a dog added to my life a lot of positives I did not expect.

I of course expected it to be a mostly positive experience, and overall value is definitely positive after all his ransacking, but that’s all from the expected benefits. Anyone can probably look at their life and guess what benefits will an incarnated Lucifer have.

What I would like to talk about are all those unexpected benefits. What you may not know, is that owning a dog automatically increases your probability of living longer by 24% (Study link)

Well… it’s a lot more complicated than that and by no means am I saying that if you get a dog you will automatically live 24% longer, but it is an interesting situation.

I knew about this study way before I had my personal demon-lord, but only after getting him, I am starting to understand why.

This all comes only from my personal experience and shouldn’t be necessary extrapolated to your experience, but hear me out.

I think there are two main reasons why having a dog makes us live longer.

1. Physical –> You move more
   • Not much of an argument there, you will simply move more. Doesn’t matter if you want to or not. I am pretty confident you will go on a walk, coz the alternative is destroyed furniture and peed-on floor.
     –
   • Having a dog sorta forces you to go on walks, coz that monster has a lot of energy and if that energy doesn’t get out outside of your house/flat, it will happen inside.
     –
     • I have some real data for it, according to my watch, my daily average total of steps is almost 3x bigger from when I didn’t have him. That’s a lot.
       Partly coz I was simply lazy, but there is definitely a difference between telling yourself, you should go on a walk and having to go on walk coz there is a little monster staring at you.
       
       —
       
2. Psychological –> That thing will die if you don’t take care of it
   • There is something strange that happens to us humans when we need to take care of some other living being. It forces you to pay more attention and be more careful.
     What is really strange… it seems to me like this effect sorta transfers onto yourself. If you need to take care of your puppy, you better be in shape to do it, so it indirectly forces you to take care of yourself more.

As a pretty important note here: by no means am I saying go get a dog, so you live longer.
It’s very impactful decision and should be taken only after very deep consideration.

Demon Neko

Currently looking for new target of his wrath, very likely my hand.