| Summary: | 碩士 === 元智大學 === 社會暨政策科學學系 === 98 === Keeping pets has become a trend in modern society. In an aging society, elders often keep pets to enhance their emotional attachment. This study thus is to explore elders in urban and rural areas in keeping their pet animals in terms of types, attitude, status and motivation. Furthermore, the study examines the forming process of elders'' keeping pets, and the analysis of effects on the relations between elders keeping pets and physical and mental health and quality of life. This study adopts qualitative research interviews to do data collection. The scope in the study covers the areas of Ilan, Taipei, Taoyuan, and Hsinchu. There are 18 persons in the interviews, including elders over 65 years old with pet-keeping experiences, family members, caregivers, experts, scholars, pet store owners and veterinarians. The study shows that pet owners in remote areas would focus on pets in terms of "protection". With a pet in company, the pet owner would feel more sense of security; pet owners in urban areas would focus on enjoyment of life, and consider pets important in the spiritual aspect. The functions are placed on the features of keeping accompany with owners. Furthermore, the findings of this study reveal that in the process of keeping pets, the elders in the adaptability stage feeds on the pets out of love, which meets the pet owner in security needs; In the adaptation period, because that children are not around, elders may come up with loneliness and cause the "emotional transfer"; pets have become important companionship; in the mature stage, elders growing trust in pets regarded the pets as close members of the family. In conclusion, the study gives a concrete proposal as follows 1. elders should carefully choose a pet according to his/her ability to control over it, avoiding accidents that he/she may lose control, for example, go out with a large-size dog. 2. When the elder keeps a pet at home, sons and daughters may give more helps to clear up pet''s excretion so that the elder can own the pet at ease 3. When the elder has a pet, he/she should pay attention to the health habit of keeping pets so as elders may live with vitality and good health.
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