Dante is always ready for a selfie…
How could I miss ? I am surrounded by dogs every day.
I have my dog, Cheeky, who looks like Anubis (the Greek name of a god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion) and eats almonds.
My husband has a big bruiser named Dante whose hobbies include shedding, sniffing butts and licking his nether regions.
My daughter has two dachshunds, Toby and Yogi. Toby is quite rotund—I think he’s full of so much love and good nature it makes him bloated. Yogi, on the other hand, I usually refer to as “that little craphead.” But he is cute. Destructive and cute.
Maybe being surrounded by so much canine adoration is why I rarely get sick.
From WebMD—…for nearly 25 years, research has shown that living with pets provides certain health benefits. Pets help lower blood pressure and lessen anxiety. They boost our immunity. They can even help you get dates.
“The old thinking was that if your family had a pet, the children were more likely to become allergic to the pet. And if you came from an allergy-prone family, pets should be avoided,” says researcher James E. Gern, MD, a pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
However, a growing number of studies have suggested that kids growing up in a home with “furred animals” — whether it’s a pet cat or dog, or on a farm and exposed to large animals — will have less risk of allergies and asthma, he tells WebMD.
In his recent study, Gern analyzed the blood of babies immediately after birth and one year later. He was looking for evidence of an allergic reaction, immunity changes, and for reactions to bacteria in the environment.
If a dog lived in the home, infants were less likely to show evidence of pet allergies — 19% vs. 33%. They also were less likely to have eczema, a common allergy skin condition that causes red patches and itching. In addition, they had higher levels of some immune system chemicals — a sign of stronger immune system activation.
