How does a dog help a person? What kind of dog helps a person? How do dogs help sick people?

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Many animals help people, but hard workers like dogs are hard to find. There is an opinion among scientists that at the dawn of mankind, it was these four-legged animals that were the first to tame. If so, they have served us for about 15,000 years. Over this long time, many breeds have been bred, from the tiny Chihuahua, which can be only 10 cm tall, to the Great Dane, which grows over a meter. They are all different, but they are united by a common beautiful feature - selfless devotion to man. You can talk about how dogs help people for a long time. Let's dwell on the most interesting.

Guinea pigs

Every schoolboy knows about Belka and Strelka, who have been in space before Gagarin. These two outbred females made it possible for scientists to study how overload, weightlessness, cosmic radiation and much more affect the body. The dog astronaut's behavior predetermined how many orbits the first human astronaut would make in space. Before Belka and Strelka, others were also launcheddogs, but they all died. Their deaths helped the developers understand and fix the bugs.

On the question of how a dog helps a person, the answer will be incomplete if you do not remember the works of the great Pavlov. He was able to make a lot of discoveries regarding the work of the gastrointestinal tract, conditioned and unconditioned reflexes, salivary glands and intestines. In fact, he created the physiology of digestion. Absolutely in all his works and experiments he was helped by dogs. Pavlov was extremely fond of his four-legged assistants, he tried with all his might to make their life better. On his initiative, they even created a monument to the dog, wanting to perpetuate the invaluable help of these animals to all mankind.

Smell and other dog features

To understand why and how a dog helps a person, you need to say a few words about the features of its senses. Our four-legged friends have the same number of them as we do, only more developed. The dog's eyes are designed so that it can see in the dark. This is understandable, because the ancestors of dogs were predators who went out to fish mainly at night. The hearing of our pets is unusually developed. They hear about 5 times better than a person, and they can even catch ultrasonic waves! But the most acute, one might say, phenomenal, in dogs is the scent. The number of nerve cells in some breeds reaches 230 million! The dog is able not only to catch a single molecule in a cubic meter of air, it is able to remember it. In addition, animals can distinguish the amount of odor that enters each nostril, thereby determining where it came from.

From under the snow avalanches

Many of us, when asked how a dog helps a person, will answer - it saves people. Using a keen sense of smell and sensitive hearing, tetrapods are attracted to rescue climbers and skiers who were covered by a snow avalanche. Not a single person could do this task. An interesting fact is that a dog smells a person under a 5-meter thick layer of snow. Most often, St. Bernards are accepted for the position of such rescuers. A flask of brandy is tied around their neck so that the found person can warm up before the arrival of human rescuers. In addition to St. Bernards, shepherd dogs, retrievers, Labradors, Rottweilers, and Dobermans perform such tasks well. Many feats performed by quadrupeds are known. So the dog Ajax, saving Austrian schoolchildren, searched for children and adults in the snow for almost 100 hours without rest. As a result, everyone was saved, and the dog's paws were worn to the bone. Another dog named Barry rescued 44 travelers from freezing. 45 was so clueless that he mistook him for a bear and shot him. A monument was erected to the glorious Barry in Paris.

On land and sea

Climbers are looking for their own adventures. But it often happens that you need to save people who did not leave their home. It's about earthquakes. Answering how dogs help people, it must be said that they are looking for miracle survivors under the rubble. Dogs can also smell the dead, but they are not distracted by them as long as there are smells of the living. They are able to smell a person under a thickness of stones several meters. Having found what they need, the dogs begin to bark loudly, making it clearthat there is someone there. For example, during the earthquake in Neftegorsk, spaniel Lenya and setter Lassie found 35 people.

Dogs find people not only under rubble, but also in burning buildings. Their unique nose does not pay attention to burning and smoke, it focuses only on the smell of someone who needs help.

In addition to those who are on fire, dogs also save those who are drowning in water. Here the unsurpassed champion is the diver or, scientifically, the Newfoundland. Representatives of this breed have special membranes between their toes, thanks to which they are able to swim about 20 km, and the third eyelid allows them to dive to a depth of almost 30 meters. This breed is fearless. So, the dog Maas was able to jump into the water to save a drowning man not only from the shore, even from a helicopter.

On guard of the law

The unique canine scent is used by people and in the fight against criminals. The police "serve" mostly shepherd dogs. They are considered to be the most trainable. Labradors and spaniels are less often involved. Previously, dogs were used to take the trail, sometimes during detention. So the shepherd Sultan for 10 years of service helped to detain 2 thousand criminals. But this is an incomplete answer, how a dog helps a person. The photo above shows the dog and the drugs he found. You can often see how, during customs inspection, a tailed policeman carefully sniffs suitcase after suitcase. Also, dogs are involved in finding explosives. This is especially true when there is a threat of terrorist attacks.

Hunters

Excellent scent of four-legged friends in everyday life is no less important. How does a dog help a person, for example, on a quiet hunt? This refers to the search for truffle mushrooms. These delicacies grow underground in oak roots. Finding them without specially trained terriers is quite difficult. Historians report that even King Louis the Fifteenth adored such a pastime.

Many breeds of dogs help people on the hunt. These are burrowing dachshunds and terriers, from which neither a fox, nor a badger, nor a raccoon can hide. There are many breeds of hunting dogs, including greyhounds, huskies, retrievers, spaniels. All of them must be fearless, agile, fast and, of course, loyal to their master.

How a dog helps a person in everyday life

Many of us love dogs and keep them at home. One of the main functions of our pets is the protection of the owner. Some choose large breeds of dogs for this purpose, such as a shepherd dog, a great dane, a Moscow watchdog. But any dog is suitable for this role, even a mongrel. The main thing is that he should be able to bark loudly, warning the owner of the danger.

It's another matter if a dog guards livestock. Only large, strong and hardy breeds are suitable for the role of shepherds, because they can happen to fight predators. The most popular among shepherd dogs are collies, shepherds, kelpies. Dogs are able not only to protect livestock from predators, but also to ensure that the herd does not disperse around the area. They are also trained to look for stray and lost animals.

I wonder how and what kind of dog helps a person, like a horse. There are breeds of special sled dogs, which are worth their weight in gold by the peoples of the north. This is understandable, because animals not only provide movement on the snow, but also protect against predators, help herd deer, hunt, and sometimes even provide food.

Healing dogs

I would especially like to note how dogs help sick people. There is even a special term "canistherapy". It means rehabilitation and treatment activities using dogs. The breed here is completely unimportant, the main thing is that the tailed doctor is smart, as patient and good-natured as possible. Such treatment helps children with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, oligophrenia, autism, heart disease, who have difficulties with social adaptation. After classes with dogs, children improve memory, coordination of movements, speech, they become more sociable. Even the number of epileptic seizures is decreasing.

There is another area of medicine where dogs are used, or rather, their unique sense of smell. This is oncology. Our four-legged pets are able to smell a cancerous tumor in its very embryo, when there are no symptoms yet, and thereby save a person's life.

Dogs and disabled people

There is a category of people among us who, for various reasons, have limited physical abilities. How do dogs help people with disabilities? Most often they act as guides for the blind. But besides this, four-legged friends can serve as mounts for children who are notcan move on their own. The story of the boy Anthony, suffering from cerebral palsy, and his terrier Stevie, who accompanies the child to school, carries his medicines, makes sure that the head of the ward is in the correct position (otherwise Anthony starts to choke), and calls for help when the child an attack begins.