182 Many people have a close relationship with their pets. These people treat their birds, cats, or other animals as members of their family. In your opinion, are such relationships good? Why or why not? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Though there may be some small shortcomings of having a pet at home, I am of the opinion that generally speaking, such relationship is a positive and beneficial one.

First of all, having a pet at home can make the person virtuous, sympathetic, humane and full of love. When dealing with animals, people usually become satisfied by the harmonious relationship between them and their pets. The feeling of reliability, goodness and love fills their hearts. You can hardly imagine a ruthless killer growing out of a family with a lovely dog that will swing its tail to him when he comes back home and chase after Frisbees thrown away by him. The evil and eccentric ideas will never appear when you are playing with your pet that you love so much.

Secondly, a pet can be very good friend and support you when you feels lonely. This is especially true for elders and children. When people grow up, they gradually loose the ability to catch up with the pace of the world, their friends fade away one by one, and their communication with their children diminishes. They normally will feel a bit lonely and want somebody to talk to and care for. If at that time, a pet is available at hand, it can serve the function of a good friend and an object to talk to. Elders can also find their value of existence on the world out of caring for those little animals. In some extreme cases, the pet may be considered their only relatives in the world and the only reason to live.

For children, they have a generation gap with their parents. Though parents love them very much, they still feel lonely because they do not share the same language with their parents. They would rather play with their pets then with their parents. This is especially important if there is only one child in the family. Furthermore, they can also learn to care for others as well as themselves through the process of playing with and caring for their pets.

The biggest shortcoming people may raise about having a pet would be from hygienic aspect as far as I am concerned. They may argue that there are lots virus and germs carried by those pets and that close contact with them would make people vulnerable to various kinds of diseases. My answer would be that, first, those virus and germs can largely be controlled by precautious measures such as regular bath, antibacterial and preventing pets from exposure to contagious environment. It is not that easy actually to get disease from pets. The statistics can absolutely verify my argument. Even if people cannot ignore such small risk, I would argue that this risk is trivial compared with the benefit that having a pet would bring to us.

I have had lots of pets such as two cats, one turtle, one hedgehog, etc. Though due to practical reason I do not have one right now, my time with my lovely pets can only be described as fabulous. I can never for the world think of any negative word to describe such relationship and I am sure that most of the people with pets will agree with my opinion.