People like pets at any age because they help build responsibility, increase happiness, and make people feel needed. However, pets are especially important for aging adults for a number of reasons. If you are looking at senior assisted living facilities, here are three reasons why you should actively seek one out that brings in pets at least once a week.

1. Pets Can Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease

There are a lot of warning signs for the development of heart disease. These can include higher blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and increased triglyceride levels. It turns out that owning a pet, or at least interacting with a domestic animal on a regular basis can lower all of these factors. Researchers are not exactly sure why this happens, but they hypothesize that it could be the fact that having an animal depend on you, even just to give it attention, can get you out of your own head and worry about the animal, reducing your stress levels.

2. Pets Reduce Stress About the Future

Worrying about the future can be one of the major difficulties in a person's life, especially if that person is older and has to manage finances or worry about how he or she is going to manage the remaining years.

One of the best things about pets is that they aren't able to worry about the future. They're much more concerned with whether or not you're going to accidentally drop food or will be willing to scratch behind their ears. When seniors interact with pets, they are much more focused on being in the present, rather than worrying about the future. If they interact with pets on a regular basis, there's a chance that this present mindfulness might stick with them even when they are not with the pet, increasing their quality of life.

3. Seeing Pets Forces Seniors to Interact With Others

Most assisted living facilities will not bring pets directly into the rooms of the people who would like to see them. Instead, they bring the pets to a large room all together and allow the seniors to gather there to interact with them. This means that any senior at the facility who wants to hug a puppy will also have to talk to his or her neighbors. This is critical because it can help build bonds that will make the senior's life more pleasant.

For more information, talk to the assisted living facilities that you are considering, like Alpine Manor Home For Adults.

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