Animal Assisted Therapy

Animal Assisted Therapy and Developmental Disorders in Minors Animal Assisted Therapy also known as animal-assisted therapy has been formally introduced to the world in the last ten years or so. Although animals have always been a place of comfort for a lot of people, scientists just began to realize the impact animals have on society. The world has begun to experiment with what animals can do to benefit human health. The most common type of animal-assisted therapy is equine-assisted therapy. The animal that is incorporated is an equine; which is just a fancy name for a horse. Equine-assisted therapy's impact on minors who have mental health issues have led to a successful new type of therapy that includes multiple benefits. Equine-assisted …show more content…
In addition to physical benefits there are many mental health benefits including, lifting spirits and reducing depression, decreases feelings of isolation, encourages communication, provides comfort, increases socialization, reduces boredom, lowers anxiety, helps youths overcome speech and emotional disorders, creates motivation for almost everything. In occupational therapy, equine-assisted therapy increases joint movement maintains and/or increases motor skills, allows movement to stretch farther and exercise longer. Canine Assisted Therapy (CAT) is a type of animal-assisted therapy where dogs are integrated into therapy. Recently, dogs have been used in school settings to help relieve stress and helps treat other acute mental/developmental …show more content…
This specific training method is where the dog is able to maintain a relative position to the handler regardless of how the handler moves (Kirsten). As a result, to make sure service dogs are capable of helping their owner, they need to perform at least three tasks to alleviate some of the client's difficulties with their disability. Dogs must be spayed or neutered, be current on vaccinations, and require a minimum of 120 hours of training for each dog trained by a member of an organization that is certified. A dog must be able to proof. Which is a type of training where the dogs to be able to resist distractions, one type of distraction at a time. These specific distractions are from someone clapping their hands to something where if outside he/she will not run off if a squirrel runs by or if his leash is dropped and even when bystanders are offering food or even petting and calling out to him. A service dog does not help his/her partner if he/she cannot resist distractions. (Assistance Dogs International). The easiest part of training is called "task training." Task training is where the partner makes up tasks for the dog to do as the final test to see if he/she is able to be a service dog. Many dogs are able

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