Parenting with Pets beautifully details the never ending learning opportunities family pets naturally bring into the lives of their children. Parents will appreciate the many examples of challenging life lessons and how our pets can be the most effective teachers with our guidance and interactive dialogue with our children. Parenting with Pets will show you how pets facilitate social interactions, and how children from pet-owning homes have better verbal and nonverbal communication skills than those from non--pet-owning families. Pets can also help teens through awkward adolescence. This book will show you how pets augment the lessons we teach. Although they cannot take a parent's place in raising children, pets can help to remind parents that many of the things we find stressful, such as business meetings, traffic jams, frustrating coworkers, aren't really that important. Animals have a profound effect on human physiology. They slow the heart rate, lower blood pressure, and temper