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Exploring Animal-Assisted Programs with Children in School and Therapeutic Contexts

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Abstract

Animal-Assisted programs with children are becoming increasingly popular in school and therapeutic settings. This article provides an overview of the benefits accrued by children as well as the concerns with programs which involve animals, and therapy dogs in particular, in these environments. Research over the past 30 years indicates that therapy dogs may offer physiological, emotional, social, and physical support for children. The distinguishing features of Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) are characterized by the supplemental inclusion of a trained therapy dog in reaching an intervention goal in therapeutic environments, and as a supplement to an educational objective in school contexts. The general assumptions underlying AAT with children are that although therapy dogs are interactive, children seem to perceive them as non-judgemental participants who are outside of the complications and expectations of human relationships. This unique interaction may offer children a valuable form of social and emotional support in educational and therapeutic settings.

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Notes

  1. Friedmann et al.’s (1983) study examined the influence of a dog on children’s blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) and involved 36 children aged 9–16 years. In this study, each child rested comfortably for 2 min before reading for 2 min from a book of children’s poetry. “In one condition a friendly dog was present in the room and in the other it was not” (p. 462). The children had not met the dog prior to the experiment. The researchers determined that the dog’s presence “was associated with lower BP and HR” (p. 464) while the children read. Further, the authors “speculate that the presence of a pet modifies the subject’s perception of the experimenter and the environment by making both less threatening and more friendly, which leads to a decrease in resting BP and in the BP response to verbalization” (p. 464).

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  1. Department of Elementary Education, University of Alberta, 103 10308 114th St NW, Edmonton, AB, T5K 2X2, Canada

    Lori Friesen

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  1. Lori Friesen
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Correspondence to Lori Friesen.

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Friesen, L. Exploring Animal-Assisted Programs with Children in School and Therapeutic Contexts. Early Childhood Educ J 37, 261–267 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-009-0349-5

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