Emotional Support Animals
I know Emotional Support Animals (ESA) are all the rage nowadays and I also know that many people call their pet an ESA just so they can take it on an airplane or into a restaurant. In my opinion, if you need your pet in the restaurant with you, then your medical condition is likely bad enough to warrant an actual service animal that is registered.
I’m not going to get on my soapbox here, I simply wanted to talk about my pets and how they help me emotionally.
First let me qualify that none of my pets are registered ESA or service animals for that matter, nor do I personally have any intention of going down that route unless my medical conditions warrant such a thing.
Depression is going to be a byproduct of pain for most chronic pain sufferers. And depression carries a ton of baggage with it. When I feel down and the pain is really getting to me, I usually call on my dog or my cat to come to comfort me. Roxie the family pit bull mix is more than happy to cuddle with anyone at any time. But then again most dogs are, especially true of the Pit Bull (American Bulldog) breed, which is without a doubt, one of those breeds that are truly big babies.
My dog is two years old and just out of that silly puppy stage, but she is really coming along. I can always count on her wanting to sit with me on the couch and cuddle. The problem with Pit Bulls is that they are well, generally fairly large dogs and two they can’t seem to hold their licker very well (meaning that they like to lick you all the time, as a show of affection towards you) and Roxie is no acceptation to that. Her other problem, if you want to really look at any of this as a problem (and I really don’t), is that she loves to have her belly rubbed and if you stop, she gets upset. My favorite spot to rub on her (or any Pitty for that matter) is her super soft ears. That will relax me in a few seconds.
But my favorite pet to cuddle with is usually one of my two cats or the rabbit. We have ten cats in the house, yes, ten. Why in the hell would someone have that many cats you might ask. Well, it didn’t start off that way. They were basically kittens that we rescued from bad situations and nursed to health and tried to adopt out, but we got very few takers. In the first litter, we adopted most out, but we kept two for our personal cats, In the next litter we rescued we couldn’t get any adopted out as well as with the third and final litter. So that is how we have ten cats. Their story is detailed in another post.
Now the bunny is a similar story, where he would have been dinner for someone if we didn’t rescue him. OK, dinner is a little harsh, but he was a domesticated rabbit that was somebody’s pet that they could no longer take care of so they were actually going to release it into the wild, where it likely wouldn’t have survived. We have had him for close to eight years now, and he basically lives like one of the cats and actually is buddies with many of them as well.
Now, back to my cats, I have two of them that have claimed me as their person and they both love to sleep at my feet in bed or cuddle with me when I’m resting on the couch for the evening.
What is your favorite pet to cuddle with?
