Animals
can help reduce loneliness, grief, fear and pain. St. Barley’s had
a couple who lived there together for over ten years. After the wife
died he started to regress and came out of his room less and less to
intermingle. But I did notice that one of the few times he would
come out and even have a faint smile on his face was when the animal
visits took place.
Residents
will, quite often, freely open up around animals because animals
provide a safe avenue for communication. Animals do not judge us, do
not talk back and are wonderful listeners and basically accept us for
who we are.
Animals
don’t care what kind of personal issues a person has, the animals
live in the here and now. People will usually tell animals things
they have never told any human being.
Taking
care of an animal also takes a person’s mind off of their own
problems, even if it is for a short while. A person caring for an
animal must concentrate on caring for another living thing and attend
to the animal’s immediate needs and, in turn, this can make a
person feel needed, which raises self-esteem. This helps people focus their thoughts on something outside their own immediate
problems and can give them a better perspective and help increase a
person’s will to live.
Sometimes
Administrators take a dim view of incorporating animals into the
nursing home setting. Some fear other residents will have allergies
or others will trip over animals and get hurt. They also fear
residents will incur scratches or bites, but this is ridiculous
because many elderly have animals in their private homes, some have
several and for good reasons.
Animals
help alleviate any loneliness the elderly may start to experience as
they age. Animals make a place feel more like a home and much
less like an institution and animals can help generate discussions
whenever the elderly get together to chat.
Animal
antics will usually always make residents laugh, or at least smile
while watching them, this hold true for even the most cantankerous
resident.
This
doesn’t mean every family that tours a facility will like
the idea of having animals living in the nursing home. That’s
fine, and if it’s the case then maybe they are just too much into
the idea of a facility as an institution or hospital.
But
if every nursing home, or at least many more of them, adopted animals
as part of the permanent setting, most families would just take for
granted that the animals are an integral part of the nursing home
setting. A nursing home that attracts animal lovers as staff is
wonderful too because I tend to feel more at home with people who
love animals. Those who love animals are more likely, in my
experience, to also give loving care to people too. Where's
the down side of that?
To
help alleviate any burden placed on staff to care for animals, a
facility could employ a high school or college student to come in
each day to feed, water, empty litter boxes and maybe even transport
an ailing animal to the local vet’s office. Maybe even volunteer
groups would be able to just volunteer for this service as well.
But
there are way more pros than cons to incorporating animals into a
nursing home setting.
