Every now and then you may see a homeless person walking or sitting with a dog or other pet. Just seeing this sight infuriates some people because they wonder how a homeless person can afford to keep and feed a pet.
It makes some people mad, as they’ll sometimes worry about the welfare of the pet, while others often feel that homeless people shouldn’t have pets if they’re trying to conserve their money to get on their feet again.
However, there’s actually many good reasons why a homeless person might have dogs, cats, or any other pets with them when living on the streets. There’s sometimes many benefits to having a pet with you when you’re struggling and these can come in the form of physical benefits or even mental ones.
Dogs are called “man’s best friend” and often there’s no better situation to see them meet this reputation than when you’re struggling and need them the most.
There’s really countless reasons why someone living and sleeping on the streets would feel they need a dog, or any other pet for that matter. So for those who can’t see any good reason why, here’s the top five benefits of having a pet with you when you’re homeless.
Security
The most obvious reason that anyone sleeping on the streets would have a dog is to protect themselves. When you’re homeless, it’s an obvious fact of life that you have to be on extra alert because you’ll often be living or sleeping around people who are on drugs or who have mental illnesses.
Many people living outside have nothing to lose and they know that. You should keep in mind that when you don’t have a home, you don’t have any lock on your door and this is a feeling of protection that many people with homes take for granted. So many homeless people who need some level of protection like that will compensate for it by getting themselves a dog.
Dogs can help intimidate other people from approaching you, and they can also help protect you when you’re sleeping. Even if someone is sleeping in a group of people who they somewhat trust, having one dog in that group can be a welcomed addition to the group itself if the dog is providing protection to everyone.
Dogs are much more alert at night because they have such sensitive hearing, so if an outsider or a threat approaches the group, the dog can alert everybody and wake their owner up before something bad happens.
When I was on the streets, there was a man who was going around and attacking other homeless people by lighting them on fire in the middle of the night. He would approach them when they were sleeping and would throw some type of flammable liquid on them before setting them on fire with a match.
Imagine if these victims had a dog with them at the time. They probably would have had a better chance at defending themselves and waking up before the attacker had caught them by surprise and gotten the upper hand on them.
For Sympathy
It should probably go without saying that there’s going to be bad people in any group, whether it’s a group of homeless people or a group of wealthy bankers. So while many homeless people are good-minded and upstanding citizens, there’s always going to be scammers within the group as well.
Those who prey on the sympathetic feelings of others will sometimes use dogs and other pets in order to garner more sympathy from the general public. They will often panhandle and ask for money while sitting with their dogs. The whole point of bringing the dogs along is to get more money in donations when panhandling than they normally would when they’re alone.
People often see a homeless person sitting on the side of the road with a dog and the dog helps to normalize their appearance and make others relate to them.
Many regular people in society (aka “normies”) have pets, so when they see someone else with a pet, they feel like they have more in common with that person and may be more receptive to helping them at that point.
Also, many will feel more sympathetic towards a homeless person with a dog, simply because they understand that having a pet can be costly. They may even care about the dog more than the person since they know the dog has no other way to feed itself in a city if not receiving food from it’s owner. So for this reason, people may feel a bit more giving or charitable towards a struggling person who has a pet.
Mental Health
One well-studied and commonly documented fact about homeless people is the fact that many of them have mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Many are veterans and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well. It’s because of this that many have dogs or other pets, because having pets can sometimes help relieve the symptoms of disorders such as these.
Research statistics show that dogs can help people cope with these disorders and can give them a level of camaraderie or friendship that they may need to feel better about things.
A review study that was first published in the BMC Psychiatry journal in 2018 reviewed 17 other studies which all looked into the negative and positive impacts on humans with mental disorders who own pets. The study concluded that pets have an overall positive influence on the mental disorders of many of the subjects included in the 17 studies they reviewed.
Having a pet with you can feel like having a good friend by your side, and it’s quite obvious how this could help to alleviate loneliness and depression, particularly in people who feel abandoned by their human friends and family members in their lives.
Homeless Have Hearts Too
Homeless people are people just like everybody else, other than the fact that they are normally struggling and don’t have homes. So many have big hearts and care about animals the same as anyone else would.
Because they’re out and about and on the streets a lot more than people who go home after work, they are often the first ones to come across and find stray animals that are walking the streets. Because of this, many homeless people with big hearts end up taking in strays as their own pets so that they can take care of them and ensure their safety.
When I was a child, one of my family’s dogs escaped our house and ran away a few miles down the street. By the time we found him, he was with a homeless person outside a convenience store who was feeding him beer in a small bowl. While beer is almost certainly bad for dogs and the man probably should have given him something else to drink, it was clear to us that he cared about our dog and was trying to keep him safe and take him in as his own when we came across the two.
So when you see a person on the streets that has a dog, a cat, or any other animal with them, there’s always the possibility that this was a stray animal they come across or a lost pet which they took under their wing and are now taking care of to the best of their ability.
They’re Family
You should also remember that most homeless people were not born on the streets, and many had homes, possessions, hobbies and interests before they ended up sleeping under the stars.
Many had families and pets and it’s for this reason that many still have pets even when they’re living on the streets. Most people would still keep their dog after becoming homeless, regardless of their situation, because they’d have every intention on getting back on their feet and having a home or apartment once again.
One study by researchers that was published in the medical journal Psychological Reports found that homeless people who have pets typically had a higher rate of owning pets before they were homeless than those who don’t have pets.
Many realize the fact that it could take a very long time to recover and have a place to sleep again, so they’ll try to avoid putting their pet into a shelter because the pet may be adopted or euthanized by the time they do finally do get a place again.
People with low or no income are just like everybody else in how they care about their pets and most likely view them as being the same as family members, so there’s no reason why they’d easily be able to just give them up when they unexpectedly end up on the streets.