Animal-assisted therapy looks up, first with dogs and now with cats

Five-year-old Bailey sat calmly as Siddharth traced numbers, wiped them and wrote again on his shiny golden coat. This is not regular play between Siddharth and the golden retriever. It was a free animal assisted therapy offered by a team of trained professionals to a group for children with disabilities at Bal Kalyan Sanstha in Pune.

The team from Pune’s Animal Angels has stepped into a little known field of animal assisted therapy --where animals are trained to be part of the complementary therapy for those with learning, intellectual, social and physical disabilities. Bailey is one of the 17-odd canine friends trained for therapy by the group. The handlers, therapists and animals are an integrated part of this complementary therapy.

As Bailey drank water on a hot summer afternoon, Siddharth spoke to him about how he likes to eat apples and bananas. Then, he wanted to walk around, and Bailey tagged along __ every move helping the boy develop his grip, stride and confidence.


“The therapy dog is nonjudgmental and does not treat children differently. It gives them a chance to express themselves. Siddharth and his friends have intellectual disabilities and sensory issues too. It is therapeutic for them to touch Bailey’s coat. The act of tracing numbers and letters also helps them revise what they have been taught in school,” Vaishnavi, a trainer with Animal Angels, said as more children arrived to share their day with him. Bailey’s pet parent Niti Seth could not have been prouder. Bailey came to her when he was 45 days old. She did not want him to sit at home and go out for walks. She felt that he should be able to do more. She said she had gone on a dog trek when she came to know about animal assisted therapy through some people associated with Animal Angels Foundation

“He is calm and friendly. He has been doing very well during the therapy sessions. I have seen him happy after the sessions. He loves meeting new people and seems to know what he is doing. I think he senses it. When these sessions are not there, he misses them,” Seth told TOI.

A GROWING FIELD

Animal-assisted therapy has been practised for about 20 years in the country but grew in the past five years. Over 60 years ago, Dr Boris Levinson presented a paper titled “The dog as a co-therapist” at a meeting of the American Psychological Association. He is considered the father of animal-assisted therapy.
Minal Kavishwar, founder of Animal Angels, has been coaching health professionals to become animal therapists for the past 12 years, training and certifying therapy dog teams as per international standards, applying animal therapy and documenting its benefits in various fields. There is still tremendous scope for research and application in this field in India, she said.

“We have seen it growfrom no dogs allowed in hospitals or schools to the Mumbai International Airport approaching us to create India’s first comfort dog programme, and KEM Hospital, Mumbai integrating animal therapy in their child guidance centre,” Minal said.

Hemangi Narvekar, who is pursuing her doctoral studies, with focus on animal assisted therapy at Christ University at Bengaluru, told TOI that Animal Angels Foundation was the first to popularise the concept of animal assisted therapy.

“Animal-assisted therapy has been established as a complementary therapy. There is immense scope for improvement on neurodevelopment of children with disabilities, especially those with intellectual disabilities. There is little awareness about it in India and we still do not have much evidence-based structured format of the therapy here,” Hemangi said.

LEARNING FOR SCHOOLS

Kavishwar and her team have seen a rise in individuals seeking animal therapy for stress and anxiety, parents of special kids being recommended by doctors to avail animal therapy for social, behavioural and emotional issues, corporates calling their therapy dog teams to de-stress their employees, and more and more universities encouraging students to pursue this field.

The Aatman Academy in Thane h as Rio, a trained therapy dog, who assists therapists and teachers in the school to work with children with autism and learning difficulties.

Manjushree Patil, founder director of the a cademy, said they wanted to adopt a dog and Rio came to her family when he was three months old in 2018.
“He was trained over a year, but we could not do much during the pandemic. In 2022-23, we have seen himmake tremendous contributions to the school. He is trained to be non-threatening and non-judgemental. I strongly believe that such complementary therapies have tremendous potential and we have seen Rio’s impact on children in our school,” she told TOI.

Manjushree shared her experience of how a chi ld had come down to her office last week, saying that he felt like he was having a meltdown and wanted to spend time with Rio.

“I didn’t ask the child anything… he just hugg ed and sat with Rio in his lap. I was doing my work. After some time, he said he was feeling better and could go back to the class. The children usually don’t open up and don’t express themselves easily. They have found comfort without judgement in the company of therapy animals,” she said.

CATS AND HORSES TOO

Animal Angels works with therapy dogs, cats horses, fish and rabbits. unique healing quality, which can be harnessed by the animal therapist by incorporating certain act ivities around that quality of the animal. Cats are natural healers, they are the only ones who can purr. It has been proven scientifically that the frequency at which cats purr can heal our bones and tendons.

They purr to calm down, and a cat sitting on a person’s lap and purring will significantly reduce anxiety and stress levels. Cats are not people-pleasers like dogs, Narvekar said.

“You have to work on building trust and developing a relationship with them to be able to play or engage with them. As a cou nsellor, this quality of cats can be harnessed in my counselling sessions while working with individuals who struggle with relationship based issues or personal boundaries. Ca ts in therapy bring a lot of serenity and positive acceptance for the client. They are goofy, playful and loving,” she added.