12 Reasons Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats

Ok, let’s make some cat-persons seriously angry. Although we at Dog Notebook don’t like to take sides as we love all animals equally, we do recognize certain benefits of having a canine friend over those bouncy but sly little furballs that are cats. Let’s go over a few of them, one by one.

1. Dogs Are Smarter And Not As Clumsy

Although this one is often debated, majority of animal lovers consider dogs to be smarter and more brisk than cats.

Despite the fact that cats can do some seriously awesome stunts and jumps, dogs are overall much easier to train, teach them new tricks, and you don’t exactly see them falling into fish tanks all the time.

You’ve probably seen our feline friends falling off couches, bookshelves, or running into glass doors. This is not the case with dogs.

Aside from learning tricks, being more obedient and less clumsy, dogs are actually proven to be as smart as 2-year-old children. Not to mention they work with the military, police department, and fire department, but more on that later in this article.

2. Dogs Help You Make New Friends

Our canine buddies actually act as catalysts for human social interactions. It has been proven that bonding over pet pooches can even enhance feelings of one’s well-being.

Taking your dog out and strolling around with him will inevitably lead to more interactions with strangers, especially with other dog lovers, which can result in real and long-term friendships.

One group of dog owners specifically can benefit greatly. Namely, if you are a single male person and happen to have a cute pooch, make sure you go out and about with your dog as often as possible as our 4-legged canine friend is quite a chick-magnet.

Go, try it out. You’ll thank us later.

3. IT Dogs

Even though they prefer lying on their backs while we pet them, it appears that dogs are now trying to keep up with new technologies.

Unlike most cats that are busy fighting with crumpled tissues and chasing non-existent stuff around the house, there some pretty tech-savvy dogs out there that are learning how to recognize and respond to written commands on an iPad.

Yup, they can read now. Commands like sit or whirly are just a few of the words they recognize, while they can also master the art of taking selfies.

True story. “City Dog”, a London-based company, offers sessions via their iDog clinic to train your pooch how to take snaps of himself by swiping his nose over the screen.

“These courses are about having fun together, developing the bond between you and your dog, and refining your training skills. Plus you will walk away with a cool party trick,” says Nicole Scott from the City Dog clinic.

4. Dogs Increase Our Activity

Although it can be rather inconvenient to wake up and get out of that warm bed at 6 AM only to let your pooch out to do his business, this can actually be quite beneficial for us and our daily routine.

You don’t always feel like walking your dog and taking him outside, especially on cold, snowy or rainy weather, but these little chores can help you become far more active, diligent and industrious.

Dogs require walks on a daily basis, which also encourages us to walk everyday and incorporate this little exercise in our daily routine.

It is particularly beneficial to older people with dogs who are then covering an average daily distance of approximately 1 mile. Not bad for the old folks and their pooches.

5. Dogs Are Real Life Heroes

A dog’s sense of smell can be rather useful and sometimes even a life saver.

Not only do they work in the military, fire department, police or guide the blind, several American universities are currently training Golden Retrievers and German Shepards to sniff out ovarian cancer.

In a new research conducted by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), a trained rescue dog Frankie had a staggering 90% accuracy rate at detecting cancer by simply smelling urine from people with thyroid cancer.

Our canine hero had been trained to lie down when he smelled cancer, and to simply turn away when he didn’t smell thyroid cancer in a urine sample.

A real life hero, indeed.

6. Dogs Can Comfort

While cats are also proven to provide a significant amount of comfort themselves, dogs have won this category as well, fair and square.

Dogs can sense when you are sad or stressed, they will lay down by your side in order to comfort you and ease the pain, and they won’t give up until you are feeling better again.

As they can sense diseases, they have also been known to recognize which family member has health or mental issues and comfort them.

Even though feline furballs also have the ability to sense distress and pain, they will purr and snuggle for a while, but then sooner rather than later, your cat will go about her business. This is why dogs are often preferred pets in places like nursing homes.

7. They Are Loyal

You’ve probably heard about the famous phrase: “Dog is man’s best friend”. There is a reason why this saying featured pooches instead of cats.

Your dog will always be there for you due to their typically loyal natures. They are also known to be compassionate as they simply know that you love them, which is why they will do just about anything for you.

They will find different ways of showing you their affection and gratitude. Cats, on the other hand, are not as nearly as loyal or affectionate as dogs.

However, cats and dogs will sometimes work together to earn your love back, at least in cartoons. Remember that episode of The Simpsons when they got that huge elephant Stampy, and then Santa’s Little Helper and Snowball got jealous, danced around and even managed to learn how to speak and sang we love yooouuuu to Homer?

8. Dogs Keep You Allergy And Asthma Free

It appears that pooches can prevent you from developing certain allergies and even asthma.

Exposure to dog dust (the dried flakes of skin that fall from your pooch), may prevent your kid from developing allergies and asthma later in life by altering intestinal bacteria. Those dried flakes contain bacteria that affect the production of immune cells in the animal’s airway.

“Perhaps early life dog exposure introduces microbes into the home that somehow influence the gut microbiome, and change the immune response in the airways. Early life exposure to dogs, and cats to a lesser extent, can protect against allergic sensitization, and this has been shown in epidemiological studies”, says Susan Lynch, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

9. You Can Train Them More Easily

Although there have been examples of feline furballs being trained to certain levels like using a real toilet instead of a litter box, but these cases are considered to be rather rare and outside of the norm for our cat friends.

Dogs, on the other hand, can learn quite a bit. As we already mentioned, they can even learn to recognize written commands, aside from regular sit, roll over, heel and other basic commands.

Dogs will listen and do anything to earn your love and trust, which is why they can be extremely easy for you to train, especially if training begins when they are puppies.

10. Protection

If you are a cat person, you’re probably thinking – My cat is more badass and tough than any dog, and you are perhaps right to some extent.

If you live in a household where there are both a cat and a dog, the chances are your cat is actually the alpha animal in your little community.

However, cats don’t really make good home protectors. Dogs do. A vast majority of dog breeds are excellent at guarding homes from strange people who are not welcome in your backyard.

A cat, no matter how cruel and badass she is to other pets, namely dogs, is never going to kick out and bark off potential burglars. Have you ever seen a warning sign saying “Beware Of The Cat”?

11. Dogs Help Save Endangered Species

It appears that there is nothing their superb sense of smell can do. A black Labrador named Tucker was may be a stray dog once, roaming the streets of Seattle, but he is now one of the most famous pooches around the globe.

Tucker has become an unexpected canine star as he is able to find and track the scent of orca scat, or feces, in open ocean water, up to a mile away.

By studying the whale feces that Tucker finds, the researchers can see how pollution is affecting certain whale populations and work on saving them from extinction.

Good boy, Tucker!

12. No Litter Box

One of the worst parts of having a feline buddy is the litter box.

Cleaning it is not actually a walk in the park on a spring day, and if you don’t clean it on a regular basis, that not-so-pleasant odor will soon take over every corner of your home.

This part of owning a pet is a bit more painless for dog owners.

Of course, you do have to clean up after your pooch has done his business, especially in the streets, parks, beaches or other crowded places, but it is not a difficult task, AND you can get a nod of approval from other people present at the crime scene.

Dogs will signal you when they need to go, which means you have another bonding session with your pooch outside, no matter how stinky the reason is.