Dog Therapy

Dog therapy is not a way to treat sick doggies - forget the funny idea of dogs stretched on a psychologist's couch, describing their horrible puppyhood experiences (although there are many dogs out there who could tell a lot of sad stories).

Dog therapy, a.k.a. canine therapy is a way to allow dogs do miracles for isolated, lonely, sick or disabled people. They may be small miracles, nonetheless, they qualify. Dogs help where traditional approaches fail, they are special. In the context of the above James Thurber quote - all therapy dogs definitely go to heaven.

Therapy dogs and their owners visit people in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, orphanages, rehabilitation centers and other facilities, where the residents miss natural contact with animals and people. Therapy dogs can help whenever people are isolated, under stress, sick or abused.

Clients experience relief and joy, their tensions of mind and body disappear. Wrinkles melt into smiles. Cramps, which could not be stopped by medication, relax - allowing arms and legs to stretch better than ever before. Clients have an experience they want to share with others. They have a reason to talk - it's not unusual that this is the first time they talk at all or that the dog's name is among the first words they learned. Some clients report that they found a reason to live, that the dog woke them up from self-pity ... or even from a coma. If these don't qualify as a miracles of sorts, I don't know what would.

There are three basic types of dog therapy:

• Social activities with dogs- the simplest kind of visiting program where a volunteer comes to facility to enhance the client's quality of life (kids play with the dog, adults enjoy the attention and even the mere fact of having a visitor - the dog is a centerpoint)

• Therapy with dogs - activities with the dog are planned and targeted to relief a specific mental or physical health condition: enhance communication, improve motoric skills, motivate movement and excercise and much more. Care providing professionals cooperate with volunteers and their dogs, monitor the therapy and its results.

• Education with dogs - activities with dogs aimed at improving learning skills or providing a fun way to teach children important lessons. These activities are planned and monitored by teachers cooperating with volunteers with dogs.

I don't do dog therapy, I'm a pure theoretician and my major task is to provide balance for the many dog therapy pracitioners we have in the Helping Paws and throughout the Czech Republic. My main interest is to provide and filter information about dog therapy, promote it, provide the methodology and help research projects. In other words, I'd like to take it one step further and help establishing this method as an integral part of the health, social care and educational system in the Czech Republic and in the broader context also in Europe.

These goals may sound ambitious, but I don't think they are unachieveable. My work is self propelled in this field and there is a handful of like-minded people in this country, who see the need to capture what is happening and present it to the public and the officials. What's happening is that the praciticioners have amazing results and do those above mentioned miracles on daily basis. I think it's just a matter of time before dog therapy becomes a widely accepted method - not necessarily because of us, but because of those wonderful results.

The idea of dog therapy was first introduced in the USA in 70's. But it has taken a new spin when introduced into the "unplowed field" of post-communist Czech Republic. There was so little information available about dog therapy, that people had to be creative. They developed their own unique methods and spread them word-of-mouth. This way, we ended up with in an intersting situation - very little theory and a tremendous amount of experience in practice.

In our recent contacts with organizations working in other European countries and in the US, we suddenly realized that in some ways, our methods surpassed the original idea and that we actually have something to teach our neighbors. Of course, we still have a lot to learn and any cooperation in this field is very useful. Now that the Czech Republic is a part of the European Union, we have a good chance to exchange information with many other such "pockets of activities" across the continent and unify our efforts. For two years, I worked as the vice-president of Canine Therapy Association, which gave me a chance to meet many people in this field. I have also designed their site in Czech and English (now offline). Unfortunately, this association no longer exists.

I'm working for the benefit of the field as a whole and this work is only partly tied to Helping Paws. Of course, I'm looking for sponsors for my activities in this field on project basis. Right now, I'm donating my "spare" time to these activities:

• Attending international and local conferences and gatherings, delivering speaches and participating in workshops
• Designing and webmastering the site for Helping Paws' Dog Therapy www.canisterapie.cz
• Coordinating and editing of translations of books and other materials about dog therapy from English to Czech
• Overseeing or helping research projects, dissertation and thesis works of students focusing on dog therapy
• Forming an information library which should be eventually published via Internet to provide a central information resource
• Writing a "manual" which should eventually provide an overview of dog therapy and provide basic information to people who wish to work in this field
• Working with the Helping Paws dog therapy teams - i.e. during our educations process, I sit among the volunteers, watching the lectures from their perspective to gain first hand feedback
• Creating Powerpoint presentations - for my own work as well as all of our lecturers and teams, which present our work during seminars or conferences.

When I look at this list and if I were to include all the things that I would like to do, it's enough for a full time job. I would love to be able to do this as a full time job and devote my energy to developing dog therapy in Europe. For now, I do what I can, when I can and the lack of time shows. When I talk to our dog therapy teams, they always ask for the same things - a way to gain overview, better information sources or a platform for exchanging experiences. All this is a matter of future, but mostly of time and money.