The debate over kids and animals
Last year saw publication of a major study from Europe showing that kids who grow up on farms, with animals and dirt and germs, actually have fewer allergies than those who live in cities.
We confirmed the protective farm effect seen in previous cross-sectional studies in the PASTURE birth cohort as the parents’ and siblings’ prevalence rates of allergic illnesses were significantly lower among farming families than in non-farming controls.
OK, then.
So now comes Pediatrics, official journal of your baby's doctor, to say the "non-traditional" pets many families are now getting are downright dangerous.
How dangerous? We're talking about salmonella, rabies, herpies, even plague.
On the hit list of lead author Dr. Robert Frenck at the University of Cincinnati are exotic cats and raccoons, ferrets, monkeys, Gambian rats, hedgehogs, reptiles, baby chickens and hamsters.
Reading between the lines, though, some important rules emerge that apply to kitties and puppies as well:
- Know your purveyor.
- Get the thing checked out before you hand it to your kids.
- Wash it.
- And wash the kid, too. Regularly.
I should add here that my beloved wife firmly put her foot down on most exotic pets, especially the hamsters, but we've always had dogs and cats, while the kids have pleasant memories of the years I kept a chicken coop in the back yard.
All survived, except the chickens, who were done in by raccoons, opossums, and one horrible day when my 10-year old son decided to toss grass clippings into the last one's coop (above) and it made an escape.
He called his mom, then in Texas, who worried about his chasing the poor thing into the next-door yard, where some Dobermans were.
What followed goes down in family lore. Tearfully he admitted, "And the last time I saw him he was crossing the road!"
Now we know why. To keep my son safe.