Using Pets for Therapy

The next time you pet your favorite furry friend, you many not even know that the smile you’re left with is one of the most powerful forms of therapy. Since the 1970s researches have understood that introducing a pet into therapy sessions has amazing and long lasting effect. Pet therapy is a broad term used to describe the use of pets to treat everything from heart disease, cancer and mental disorders.

Pet therapy is not limited to dogs and cats. Parrots, fish and horses are quite popular as well and all provide positive results.

The Happy Hormone

It’s well understood that petting a dog or watching fish swim around makes us smile and helps us relax, but the reason for this is the hormone oxytocin. Researches have found that interacting with animals increases our body production of oxytocin. When we produce more oxytocin the effects are wonderful: We feel happy; our blood pressure is reduced; and our body actually produces more cells prompting a better healing rate.

Pets in Therapy

Beyond making people feel happy, pets can provide a means by which two people can connect. This is quite important in therapy sessions as well as everyday life. In a therapy session a pet can provide a sense of security and safety that allows the therapist and their client to better develop a rapport. The therapist can also use the pet and the pet’s care as a way to discuss and teach nurturing skills to their clients. Children are especially susceptible to the charms of an animal and they can learn empathy from the animal.

Cats and parrots are often used to help treat people with impulse control or aggression issues. The animal will move away from the client once they become agitated. The therapist can then point this out and the situation can be worked through before things become too stimulating. With troubled teens horses have been shown to increase self-esteem since caring for such a large animal is a big responsibility. Also, the teen learns to regulate and control their emotions to avoid spooking the horse.

PTSD and Dogs

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is prevalent in soldiers returning from war. Introducing a therapy dog in the soldier’s treatment has shown to help decrease their need of drugs to treat symptoms. The dogs are trained to recognize when a soldier is starting to experience their PTSD symptoms and either licks or nudge them to signal their symptoms are escalating. This helps the soldier to better control and deal with the symptoms before they become unmanageable.