In high school I took care of my grandfather who had Alzeihmer's. One of the things I noticed was that the biggest part of his life were the animals in our house. Half of his meals, including any chewed up but undigestable remains, were fed to our dog. He would spend many hours smoking his cigar and watching the rice birds at our bird feeder. He would get up from his chair to pet the cat. It's no big mystery in today's world that animals are very therapeutic. However, from what I have seen of nursing homes, there are no in-house pets.
Now, consider all of the kids who beg and beg their parents to have pets, but their parents refuse. Wouldn't it be great to have an exchange system where the kids got to have pets, but they lived at nursing homes? The kids would walk them, pick up their poop, and feed them everyday afterschool. And for kids whose grandparents live in other cities, this might be a good way for those kids to have surrogate grandparents.
I realize that there is an issue of people who are allergic to pets. However, I think there would be plenty of nursing homes without pets that could serve these people.-- lsteinho, Jun 07 2002 [tangent] Jaytee, the psychic terrier http://www.science-.../sf121/sf121p15.htmA.k.a. a dog that runs back and forth a lot. Skeptical scientist fails to reproduce pro-parapsychology media star's results after carefully defining the experiment. [jutta, Jun 08 2002] DogShare http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/DogShareAn alternate proposal [magrak, Jun 09 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Pat dogs - wonderful concept http://www.globalid...org/BOV/BV-587.HTML [po, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] I just wanted to clarify that my idea is not that there should be animal visits to nursing homes. I watch Animal Planet all the time and I am aware that that service already exists.-- lsteinho, Jun 07 2002 I like the idea, but doubt it would fly.-- phoenix, Jun 08 2002 If you can think of any thing that will forestall the daily execution of perfectly good dogs and cats at your local pound, then you have done good.
I spent my two volunteer hours at the pound again today and had a new insight--sure, dogs have tested out as intellectually no more advanced than a 3-year old human, at best. But they definitely are on par with us, at least, and perhaps more advanced in some ways, as regards emotional range and depth. There's a book called, "Dogs Never Lie About Love", not the greatest book, I read it, but an astute title. Not to mention the scientific research that demonstrates that some are psychic.-- entremanure, Jun 08 2002 Did the dogs take a written or oral exam?-- thumbwax, Jun 08 2002 The kids want pets, but can't have them. The elderly people want companionship and someone to take care of them. Here's the exchange I propose: the kids take the animals and live in the nursing home, and the old folks live in the kids' houses and get taken care of by their parents! Everybody's happy. Hmm... wait..-- Uberminky, Jun 09 2002 The kids would walk them, pick up their poop, and feed them every day - but the dog would not live at the house. Around here, the kids do not want to walk them, pick up the poop, and feed them. The only thing the kids DO want is the dog living in their house. This would take away the only part of owning a dog that they do like, and give them only the parts that they don't like. -Well at least they wouldn't ask for another one...-- Mamamoose, May 22 2003 linky - 2 cats sane?-- po, May 22 2003 I really think this is a fantastic idea. +-- saker, May 23 2003 random, halfbakery