Car­la Rauseo

I'm sure many read­ers have seen the ti­tle of this ar­ti­cle and thought. "O no! Here's an­oth­er tree hug­ger who's go­ing to give an emo­tion­al­ly-charged lec­ture on some non­sense about a set of pot hounds."

I be­lieve peo­ple will say this be­cause the ig­no­rance about dogs is proven every­day that I walk my dog. The ma­jor­i­ty of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans do not un­der­stand dogs, nor do they know how to care for them, or ap­pre­ci­ate the ben­e­fits they can pro­vide. Grant­ed my liv­er-coloured, 85 pound flop­py-eared Dober­man is rather hu­mon­gous, and I am small in frame, but with­out fail dri­vers slow down, toot their horns, shout and of­ten stare in awe at the sight of me and my dog strolling along the side­walk. To­day I count­ed six horn toots with­in the hour of walk­ing. Why? I can on­ly sur­mise that Trinida­di­ans view me and my dog as en­ter­tain­ment...a rare, strange ex­pe­ri­ence to be tak­en in like a set of "nev­er-see come-sees." "Das ah pit bull?" one screamed at me re­cent­ly, ob­vi­ous­ly im­ply­ing that any large dog is a pit­bull.

Tri­nis are to­tal­ly un­ac­cus­tomed to see­ing peo­ple walk their dogs, be­cause they just do not do it. Trinidad is not a dog-friend­ly so­ci­ety, and with the re­cent talk of this ridicu­lous "Dan­ger­ous Dog Act" peo­ple are be­com­ing even more ig­no­rant and un­nec­es­sar­i­ly afraid of these an­i­mals. It's not the an­i­mals that are the prob­lem...it's the peo­ple. Raise a child to steal, he will be­come a thief; raise a dog to be ag­gres­sive, he will bite. Get over it and stop blam­ing the dogs.

But enough of my rant; af­ter all, this is a sports and health col­umn. There have been many sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies that have shown as­so­ci­a­tions be­tween dog own­er­ship and good health. With­out even read­ing the sci­ence, I can eas­i­ly at­test that dogs low­er stress lev­els. There is noth­ing like ar­riv­ing home af­ter a hec­tic day to a tail-wag­ging Dober­man that is un­wa­ver­ing­ly ec­sta­t­ic to see me. In fact, the Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion (AHA) re­leased a sci­en­tif­ic state­ment ti­tled "Pet Own­er­ship and Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Risk," which ac­knowl­edged a ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween pets and re­ac­tions to stress.

The state­ment al­so re­vealed that dog own­er­ship may be re­spon­si­ble for low­er­ing the risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and has re­port­ed a low­er death rate in dog own­ers with the con­di­tion. This is due to the pos­i­tive ef­fects dogs can have on as­pects of the dis­ease. Stud­ies have shown an as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween pet own­er­ship and low­er blood pres­sure and heart rates.

In ad­di­tion, there are many sci­en­tif­ic re­ports that have demon­strat­ed a re­la­tion­ship be­tween dog walk­ing and low­er lev­els of obe­si­ty. This is no sur­prise as many dog own­ers en­gage in walk­ing and move­ment, and are bet­ter able to meet the re­quired lev­els of dai­ly phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. My ses­sions of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty are much longer with my dog, than they would be with­out her. This is sim­ply be­cause I would suf­fer through 30 min­utes of jog­ging and not a minute more (be­cause I am not fond of run­ning) when she is not with me. How­ev­er, when walk­ing her, I do so for a full hour. She makes the ac­tiv­i­ty much more plea­sur­able and I get twice the amount of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty per week than if I just jogged on my own. She pro­vides me with mo­ti­va­tion to get out when I would pre­fer to lounge af­ter a long day, and in do­ing so is a huge pos­i­tive in­flu­ence on my lifestyle. This ef­fect was al­so sup­port­ed in a study ti­tled, "Peo­ple and Pets Ex­er­cis­ing To­geth­er," which showed that dogs "can serve an im­por­tant role as a so­cial sup­port sys­tem for en­gage­ment in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and par­tic­i­pa­tion in a weight loss pro­gram."

How­ev­er, if all you're in­ter­est­ed in is get­ting mo­ti­va­tion to walk, don't get a dog. If you're not a dog lover, nor have time to care for the an­i­mal, then you're wast­ing your time, think­ing un­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly and be­ing un­fair to the dog, who will suf­fer ne­glect. With an­i­mal own­er­ship comes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and time com­mit­ments, and a con­sid­er­a­tion for every­one's safe­ty...hu­mans and dogs alike.

Dog walk­ing needs to be safer for the dogs and peo­ple who walk them. Too many "dog own­ers" do not se­cure their an­i­mals and they are left to roam the streets, like poor­ly su­per­vised chil­dren, ha­rass­ing any­one who may pass by. Be­tween these ir­re­spon­si­ble own­ers and the ha­rass­ment from mo­torists on the streets, I am like a pris­on­er, re­strict­ed to a small area of my neigh­bour­hood in which to walk. Thank­ful­ly, my dog does not seem to mind, and she keeps my dai­ly step count high. Walk­ing her is the least I can do in re­pay­ment for the ben­e­fits she pro­vides me.

Car­la Rauseo, DPT, CSCS, ATRIC is a Doc­tor of Phys­i­cal Ther­a­py at To­tal Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San Juan.

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