Animal-Assisted Therapy

The bond between animals and humans is magical and healing. Animals can promote a sense of calm, comfort, or safety, as well as provide a distraction from one’s stress.

Animals become playmates, close friends, and trusted confidants.

When using this bond in the therapeutic setting, individuals can increase their sense of self, stabilize their emotions, and self-regulate.

In my office, I lead by providing autonomy to the animals, a principal that starts before they even set foot in the office as I ask them if would like to come to work that day. If they run towards the door where their work clothes are kept, I know they are in work mode, if they run outside and roll in the mud, they want to stay home because dirty dogs do not ride in my car!

When they are in their office, I follow their cues to determine if they need a break, a rest, or just some extra snuggle time.

I review the safety rules with all the children and assess their readiness to have a trained therapy dog in their session. Before one of the dogs can join a session, I must have a signed release form on file. If you do not ever wish to have one of the dogs in your session, just communicate that with me and refrain from filling out an Animal Consent form.

Because I lead with the dog’s autonomy and their preferences (Cruella does not leave home on rainy days!), they are not always present in the office. On those occasions, children do find creative ways to include the dogs in their sessions and they serve many therapeutic purposes without stepping a paw in the session.

I am currently working on my Level 1 Animal-Assisted Play Therapy certification which will provide me the skills to combine my two favorite things (play therapy and animal-assisted therapy) into one modality, as well as the training to extend my animal helpers beyond the canine variety ;) I recently discovered a type of bunny rabbit that has spots and of course I cannot wait to have the space to add one to my team!