Pets and Aspergers

I really believe that having pets can help to ease many Aspergers symptoms, because I have two dogs and they have helped my through many difficult times in my life. They taught me some of the most valuable skills I have now, and they helped me to improve in some of the areas my AS has made hard for me. Empathy, touch, and responsibility to name a few.

Pets help you learn empathy and body language.
Having pets is great for learning empathy and body language. Reading body language and emotion, is something that is often difficult for people who have AS because people have many complicated ways of communicating even a single emotion. Animals have more obvious ways of communicating emotions through body language. For example, when a dog is scared he might cower, or when a dog is happy he may wag his tail. Watching these cues in a pet can help you to develop more of an awareness of his emotions, which is useful practice for reading human emotions.

Pets desensitize you to touch.
Another area pets can help with is sensitivity to touch. As someone who has Aspergers, I can easily tell you that touch is an area that is difficult for me. When I was younger, I didn't want the dogs to lick me or even touch me at all. But after years of their persistence in the matter, I now voluntarily go up to them and pet them, and enjoy doing it. A pet won't mind it if you don't let them touch you, and a pet won't mind if you pet them for long amounts of time. Some pets even enjoy it.

With my dogs, I find that something about their fur seems to dampen my sensitivity towards touching them. Petting my dogs is a way for me to desensitize myself to touch. These skills with tolerating touch, can also be applied to interactions with people.

Pets are understanding.
Pets are very in tune with your emotions, and tend to do their best to help you feel better if they think you're sad or upset. Sometimes when I'm having a bad day, my dogs will come over to me and insist I pet them, which does help me feel better. Sometimes if I'm angry my dogs place themselves underfoot. I think that the reason they do this has to do with their pack instincts. In a dog pack order, the dogs higher up take out their stress on dogs lower on the hierarchy. I think my dog believes it's his job to be the one to absorb the stress, and puts himself in a position he thinks will annoy me so I get angry at him, and then I'll feel better. It just shows that he's willing to potentially get hurt in order to help me.

A story about my dog.
This next section is a personal example of how in-tune my dog is with me. One time when I was younger and my family had only recently gotten the dogs, I was still uncomfortable with too much interaction with the dogs, so my parents put a baby gate in front of my room so the dogs couldn't get in when I was sleeping.

Anyway, it was at night, and I was in my bed sleeping while my mom and dad were in the other room. One of my dogs, Rooben, came up to the baby gate, and started barking like crazy. My parents tried to get him to stop barking because they didn't want him to wake me up, but no matter what they did he kept barking until my parents realized something was wrong. So they went into my room to see if I was okay. They found out that sometime after I went to bed, I had developed a high fever, that if the dog hadn't pointed out could have been very dangerous to me. Ever since then, even though he can be a pain in the neck, Rooben has earned a permanent place in our family. The moral of the story, so to speak, is that my dog could tell something was wrong even better than my parents, and it shows just how in tune he is with me.

Pets are forgiving of mistakes.
Thankfully, pets are very forgiving; more forgiving than most people are. Because of this, it's often more comfortable to interact with a pet than a person. And they won't hold a grudge against you if you mess up. That's just another reason why pets are great for practicing difficult areas.

How do pets reduce stress?
Playing with your pet, or even just watching him or her, can lower your blood pressure. They can also increase the levels of serotonin in your brain. Serotonin is known as the feel-good chemical because it regulates mood, pain sensitivity, and even sleep cycles.


All of these things can make having a pet a good thing in dealing with Aspergers and day to day stress. But of course, before getting a pet you should make sure that you can manage him or her, otherwise it may do the opposite of what you want. If you can manage one, caring for a pet helps to force a person to be more responsible because the animal is relying on you to meet their needs.

This is Jordan from teenaspergers.blogspot.com signing off.