The daily work with people in clinical, social, or educational settings reveals the need to make a qualitative leap in their care. As a result, what are known as Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI) emerge.Animal-Assisted Interventions aim to train animals to become a support in treatments. Likewise, the incorporation of animals into the therapeutic process will create a focal point that will also contribute to the person’s overall development and quality of life in the social, emotional, and cognitive spheres.
What are animal-assisted interventions?
Thus, Animal-Assisted Intervention consists of interventions in the health, education, and social fields that include the participation of specially selected animals whose purpose is to contribute to the therapeutic, social, and educational improvement of individuals.
Among the multiple areas where animals can be valuable (emotional support in legal situations, assessment in diagnoses, non-family support), we highlight the following modalities to date:
Modalities of Animal-Assisted Therapies
Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) is an intervention based on the interaction and bond between a person and an animal. The animal, in this case, must be properly selected and trained to achieve therapeutic objectives, which will be set by socio-health professionals expert in the field.
Animal-Assisted Activity
Animal-Assisted Activity (AAA) is another form of intervention based on the interaction and bond between a person and an animal, but in this case, the animal must meet specific selection and training requirements. These activities will be led by an Animal-Assisted Intervention (AAI) technician, who will pursue general objectives such as recreational, motivational, desensitization, awareness, or dissemination, among others.
Animal-Assisted Education
Animal-Assisted Education (AAE) refers to interventions carried out in the educational field where the dog will accompany conversations of greater emotional intensity, without specific skills, exclusively with its closeness, its search for contact, and its presence. It should be noted that these dog behaviors are not rewarded.
Benefits of using dogs in Animal-Assisted Therapies
Thus, in these sessions, the following aspects provided by the dog’s presence will be maximized:
Affective work in AAI
Work is done with people who, due to different situations and their position in the social system, have suffered damage to their affectivity, filling them with insecurity, defensive outbursts, and detachment from a bond that would allow for constructive affectivity.
In these cases, the dog provides a starting bond, as it does not judge, know the past, or condition responses or insecurities in affection.
For this, the expert and technician in Animal-Assisted Intervention, Javier Vallejo, proposes using the bridge bond technique, which refers to the possibility of extrapolating the natural bond generated with the dog towards 4 focuses:
- Oneself
- Reference professional
- Social environment
- Expansion of the social environment
Similarly, it will also be necessary to generate flexible bonds that do not imply losses or dependencies, and that do not nullify the role and prominence of the person or the professional. Thus, the created bonds should never distract the attention of the person or the professional, but rather help maintain the attention of both.
In any case, it should be noted that the bond alone does not access the rest of the educational work, but rather the professional must propose activities that test and strengthen the created bond.
Furthermore, this bridge bond technique will give the person the option to speak in the third person about themselves, and activities such as dubbing, canine language, or etiology can be carried out, which will open infinite doors to get to know the people one works with.
Spontaneity in Animal-Assisted Therapy
While the dog’s work can create breaks with what is programmed, thanks to the creation of a completely natural and trusting atmosphere from the very first sessions, it is considered a very useful tool that allows:
- Accessing necessary conversations for educational work.
- Fostering participants’ initiative.
- Being able to carry out experiential programs regarding social, communication, coping, and problem-solving skills.
Group work in AAI
At a group level, the dog contributes to an increase in cooperative behaviors that, if used correctly in terms of trust and naturalness, can easily be extrapolated to each person’s reality.
Should conflicts arise, a dog’s spontaneity helps them to be resolved in a constructive and respectful manner. In this way, it is being fostered that all participants learn learning methodologies based on play and not on punishment and labeling, and applicable to their reality and their relationship with others.
Although in any AAE educational action, the dog provides participants with a group responsibility, this responsibility should never become a burden for any of them, but rather it should be a source of motivation, a desire to participate, or even to create a sense of belonging.
Likewise, this group responsibility generated with AAE fosters the creation of programs where participants can interact directly with their environment and, in turn, allows them to face critical situations, reflect on them, and report them or try to act to change them.
In this way, it can be concluded that Animal-Assisted Education provides activities that, beyond being transformative, also serve as a link to the community.