THE AWAKENING OF RESPONSIBLE PET OWNERSHIP IN CHILDHOOD: PUBLIC HEALTH AND CITIZENSHIP

Abstract

The concern about the growing population of abandoned pets and how they are treated athome stimulated the realization of the project.Our aim was to educate children for the ownership of a pet and encourage them to properly care for their animals, awakening responsibility since childhood. The visits were held in the Joao Pessoa city, in suburban schools, including440 students, aged from02 to 13 years. The presentations were developed in the following sequence: 1) Team Presentation; 2) Interactive activities, such as making oral questionnaire to quantify children who owned animal, what kind, how they cared and who really took care of them; 3) Puppet theater (children aged from two to nine years) and lectures (children abovenine years); 4) Educational film; 5) Distribution of pamphlets on responsible ownership forparents, teachers and school staff. As expected, the majority of children owneddogs, followed by cats, birds, hamsters, turtles, and fish. Usually many of thechildren only play with the animals and parents or keeperare responsible for feeding, giving bath and cleaning the waste. The children are unaware of the diseases that can affect animals and themselves (zoonoses), as well as the teachers who attended the lectures. We observedthat there is little information on the responsible of pet ownership, which demonstrates the importance of this work considering its educational purpose and training the awareness of young people.