63% of Australian households, providing companionship for people of all ages and lifestyles.  The reasons we own pets are many and varied and there is a large body of research that looks at the complex and changing relationships people have with companion animals. 

Previous research has shown that the presence of a dog can positively impact the speed at which preschoolers perform motor skills tasks and also their ability to adhere to instructions. This study focused on the execution of a cognitive task object categorization by developmentally delayed and typical preschool children in the presence of a real dog, a stuffed dog, or a human. The real dog involved in this study was a Miniature Poodle. The children were asked to complete a match-to-sample task in which they had to choose a picture of an object that goes with  another. Three categories of object exemplars were used: taxonomic, thematic, and irrelevant.

The presence of the real dog resulted in significantly fewer irrelevant choices than either the stuffed dog or the human conditions.

“Preschoolers Make Fewer Errors on an Object Categorization Task in the Presence of a Dog” Gee, Nancy R.; Church, Meredith T.; Altobelli, Christie L.  Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals, Volume 23, Number 3, September 2010 , pp. 223-230(8)

Provided by The Petcare Information and Advisory Service…

The ACT Greens in a Private Members Bill, proposed to allow the sale of pets in markets (provided it was by an “animal welfare group”), proposed to provide a monopoly on pet shop sales to “animal welfare groups” and a whole not of other things that were either bad policy or didn’t make sense.

Pets Australia member’s views have been very warmly received with positive responses from the Leader of the Government and Leader of the Opposition within 4 hours of sending.

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