Hayley de Ronde

Animal Welfare & Behaviour Specialist

Covering Beds, Herts, Bucks & Beyond

If you’re like any parent, you want your child to grow up feeling confident and having numerous friendships. While this may happen even if they don’t have a pet, ones who do have a much greater chance of meeting both these goals. Based on research from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, children who spend time playing with a pet often feel more confident in social situations.

While there could be many reasons for this, researchers believe the fact that the animal shows a child unconditional love no matter how many mistakes they may make has something to do with it.

In addition to this, pets also increase the likelihood of kids developing friendships. For example, shy children are often seen running up to other kids with pets, or groups of kids in a neighborhood may gather together to walk their dogs or even organize a pet talent show.

I am a strong believer in avoiding chemical products wherever possible however, where animal hygiene is concerned, chemical products are a necessity for the prevention and reduction of disease.

Vitec Global Limited has launched two new products onto the UK Pet Market through Debonaire Exotic Animal Supplies, Pet Shield™ and Zoo Shield™.

These non-toxic, antimicrobial cleaning products use hydrophobic technology to destroy pathogens on contact “continuously killing 99.9% of bacteria”.

• ‘Global warming' describes long term increases in temperature of the earth’s atmosphere.
• 'Climate’ refers to the average weather in a region over a period of typically 30 years or more. 
• 'Climate change’ refers to the recent changes in climate, which have been observed since the early 1900’s due to global warming
• 'Greenhouse gases’ are essential to the earths atmosphere, but in the right quantities.
• Global temeratures have increased by 1oC since pre-industrial times. The last time humans saw a change like this was the dawn of civilisation.
• A rise of just 1oC will create huge problems in future, for man and wildlife, which is already being seen in the Arctic. 
• Even if all greenhouse gas emissions were stopped, global temperature will continue to rise due to the gasses already in the atmosphere.

Without IMMEDIATE action on climate change, both humans and polar bears face a very uncertain future!