Your Pets, a Part of the Family

Like so many others, you likely come from a home where you’ve always had a dog, cat, or another type of pet. Whether you had a loyal Boxer dog, a mischievous Persian cat, a loud Yorkie, or a cuddly American Shorthair, you know how much these pets can mean to you and your family.

The truth is, they really are a significant part of any family.  

In a survey done by the Harris Poll in 2016, 95% of those surveyed said they consider their pets to be part of their family.  Most people will do anything for their pets. Pets change our daily routines; from when we get up in the morning, to the lunch breaks we take, and when we go to bed at night.  They even influence how we vacation.

So this begs (pun intended) the question, why do we love our pets so much?  Sarah Kaplan wrote an article in The Washington Post to tried and answer that very question.

“Dear Science,

Why do we humans love our pets so much?

“It really is an amazing question,” said Clive Wynne, director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University.

Wynne has devoted his career to studying animal behavior and the evolutionary relationship between animals and people. He said it's easy to see why our pets would love us: “The success of dogs [and other domesticated creatures] on the surface of the Earth is entirely due to the fact that we take some level of care of them.”

In fact, some scientists have suggested that pets exhibit a form of parasitism — taking food and shelter from humans without offering much in return. “They argue that we love our pets because they have hoodwinked us into it,” Wynne said.

He doesn't buy that argument. (Then again, he is a dog owner — he's under the spell!) But he acknowledged there's no satisfying evolutionary explanation for that warm, gooey feeling we get when we look at our dogs and cats.

But as someone who knows what it's like to love a dog, he was willing to indulge in some unscientific musing. Wynne noted that domesticated dogs are very childlike: They exhibit several behaviors usually found only among juveniles in wild animals, such as licking (or “kissing”) their owners' faces, and they're unable to survive on their own. When Wynne's family adopted their dog, his wife (“who is an engineer and very practical,” he said) remarked that perhaps they should have had more kids.

“She perceived that same buttons were being pressed that were pressed when we had our child,” Wynne said.

Maybe that's all there is to it: Humans are programmed to love soft and helpless things.

So what have you done to take care of your pet in 2019? For those who have utilized pet insurance in the past, they know how much a policy that covers unforeseen scenarios in life can truly mean. At Online Insurance Hub, we have the strongest, most practical policies for your pet. We ensure they are covered when you need it most.

Click below to have a look at what we can do for your pet: The wagging tails and purrs simply prove they deserve it. And so do you.