Pets Keep Us Young

By SAM URETSKY

“You are old, father William,” the young man said.
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head —
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” father William replied to his son,
“I feared it would injure the brain;
But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.”
— Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Science marches on – notably in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, volume 14, October 2022, which published a report “Pet ownership is associated with greater cognitive and brain health in a cross-sectional sample across the adult lifespan”

That one is long, and abstruse, and is not recommended reading, but a study from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China (JAMA Open Network) 12/26/23 titled “Pet Ownership, Living Alone, and Cognitive Decline Among Adults 50 Years and Older” is easy to read and understand. The authors concluded “In this prospective cohort study, pet ownership was associated with slower rates of decline in verbal memory, verbal fluency, and composite verbal cognition among older adults living alone, but not among those living with others, and pet ownership completely offset the associations between living alone and decline in verbal memory, verbal fluency, and composite verbal cognition.” Of course, they really concluded with the recommendation that there should be more studies confirming their findings. One of the inferences of his paper is that “owning a pet can reduce one’s brain age by up to 15 years.”

Other studies have concluded that dogs are more effective at warding off dementia than other species and multiple pets were more effective than a single pet. These findings are significant in view of the anticipated opponents in this year’s election. For example, ex-President Donald Trump claims to be a very stable genius with an IQ of 156, although there is no evidence for either. Ex-President Trump is only the third president who did not have a pet in the White House. The other two, James Polk (11th) and Andrew Johnson (17th), did not have pets, although Johnson apparently cared for mice that he found in his bedroom.

While this may contradict recent studies, some presidents had unusual pets. John Quincy Adams, the president with the highest estimated IQ, kept an alligator in the White House bathtub. Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon named Rebecca, and Herbert Hoover had an opossum named Billy Possum. James Garfield had a parrot named Martha who, it’s claimed, attended cabinet meetings.

Of course, the most famous presidential pet was Franklin Roosevelt’s Scottish Terrier, Fala, who was a national delight and starred in two MGM shorts. When Republican misinformation turned to Fala, it led to FDR’s Fala Speech, which kicked off his fourth campaign for President: “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers, in Congress and, out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him – at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or 20 million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious.”

As a matter of record, some presidents had more pets than others. Theodore Roosevelt had a collection that included dogs, cats and a bear. John F. Kennedy had a number of dogs, including Pushkina, a mixed breed given by Nikita Krushchev, who was from one of the first and Charlie, who was, of the Kennedy’s dogs, the first among equals. The Kennedy’s had parakeets, hamsters, a cat and a canary, although there’s no record of how they got along.

Now there are many sources of information about presidential dogs and the benefits of having pets as protection against cognitive decline, which can be a precursor to dementia. Note that the JAMA paper studied 8,000 older adults and observed differences in the study and control groups after nine years. A shorter but more intense study might show differences in as little as four years.

Donald Trump is 77 years old, and so, regardless of his claims, he has a 77-year-old brain. Joe Biden has a German Shepherd puppy (Commander) and a cat (Willow). He also has an adult German Shepherd, (Major) but after a few incidents Major was moved to a quieter environment. Major still has a place in history as the first rescue dog to live in the White House.

Still, in terms of brain age, Biden gets the maximum discount for multiple pets. That is, 81-15 = 66. So, President Biden may be 81, but his brain is a lot more youthful. Pets do keep you young.

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sam.uretsky@gmail.com. Editorial and research assistance provided by Jenny Beagle Uretsky, LMAS (Louisville Metro Animal Shelter)

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2024

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