If you or someone you love suffers from a physical or mental handicap, you may be interested in learning more about animal assisted therapy. With the many documented advantages of animal assisted therapy, it is definitely a technique that you may want to explore further to be able to enhance the health of the person you care for.
What is Animal Assisted Therapy?
Animal assisted therapy is not all about spending time with a cute and Cuddly creature, though this can definitely be part of the procedure. Instead, animal assisted therapy is a sort of physical or occupational therapy that involves using animals to be able to help meet therapeutic objectives. By way of instance, a child with a physical disability or injury which has lead to muscle fatigue in the arms might be invited to pet an animal with the feeble arm and have a check over here. The therapist may also add weights to the kid’s arm to be able to additional help strengthen the muscles. With the support of the pet, the child is more motivated to lift the arm and carry out the exercises that are essential for recovery.
What are the Benefits of Animal Assisted Therapy?
The benefits of animal assisted therapy have long been recognized by St. Mary’s Hospital for Children at New York. In actuality, the hospital began a pilot animal assisted therapy program in 1998 and has since expanded the program to include many dogs, which provide treatment to children in classes and on an individual basis.
Besides helping encourage children to participate in their prescribed Therapy, there are quite a few other advantages of animal assisted therapy. By way of instance, interacting with animals can enhance the overall quality of life of their ill or injured child. Because of this, it can help accelerate recovery time. Moreover, the bonds which children form with animals can be very beneficial and results from the pet functioning as a type of co-therapist from the child’s therapeutic program.
Another one of the benefits of animal assisted therapy is that caring for those creatures can help special needs kids develop more independence. By having them feed, groom and care for the creature, kids can improve their fine motor skills, cognitive skills, dressing skills, play skills and much more. The Fact is that spending time with a loving pet makes everybody feel Better, if in need of treatment or not.
Therefore, if allowing a furry friend, four-legged friend to socialize with ill kids can help them heal faster, why would not you employ animal assisted therapy to a therapeutic program? Animal Assisted therapy is fast gaining attention from therapists from all over the world. With these many advantages of animal assisted therapy, it is not difficult to understand why.