Your dog offers you companionship, loyalty, unconditional love—and, research shows, motivation to exercise.

A study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society of more than 2,500 older adults compared walking habits of dog owners and nonowners.

Dog owners were seven times likelier than nonowners to walk for two-and-a-half hours or more a week. That’s the exercise goal experts advise for older adults. At the end of the study, the dog owners were twice as likely to have kept up their good walking habits.

Don’t have a dog to walk? You can offer to walk a neighbor’s dog or volunteer at a local humane society. To find a dog who needs a home, go to www.petfinder.com.