Canis Therapy

What is Canis Therapy?

Canis therapy (canis – dog + therapy – treatment) is very popular and promising therapeutic movement in zoo medicine, where patients are treated with the help of dogs. Canis therapy is a kind of animal therapy. It's used in medical and social rehabilitation. Specially trained therapeutic dogs relieve patients' condition with neurological or psychological disturbances or deviations.

Why are the dogs used in canis therapy? Dogs have similar to humans qualities, such as sensibility, the ability of feeling, expressing through actions, sounds, mimics, response to the person's communication. Moreover, dogs are easily trained to run verbal commands and are willingly obeyed them.

Canis Therapy: the Content and the Good of Communication with Dogs

Canis therapy is the alternative psychotherapeutic method of treatment and rehabilitation. Specially selected dogs take part in canis therapy. Doctrine about therapeutic dogs appeared in time of Hippocrates. Works of art, archeological digs and other documents of those times give evidence of treatment with dogs since then.

Canis Therapy Activities

You can:

Set up an obstacle/agility course for the dog. It can be helpful to use equipment from the dog sport of agility, such as tunnels, weave-poles, hoops, and hurdles.
Set up a treat-toy for the dog (helps with frustration)
Practice heeling (with treats) to get the child away from an obsession with their iPad
Play tug (teaches how to manage arousal)
Play stop-and-go games like "Red Light, Green Light" (teaches how to manage arousal)
Teach the dog to make better eye contact (using click/treat) and thus practices themselves making eye contact
"Give advice" to the dog, perhaps about stealing, sharing, or dealing with anger (can be especially good for a child who has experienced trauma)
Read to the dog
Hide a toy and ask the dog to find it using their nose (helpful for attachment problems)
Teach the dog a trick like spinning in a circle, closing a door (using click/treat) to teach patience and tolerance
Pet or brush the dog (learning to stay calm)
Dramatic play involving child dress-up (not the dog)
Draw what the time with the dog means to them
Teach the dog to turn on a light button (if they are afraid of the dark)
Teach the dog to unroll a rug by putting treats in it. A less complicated game can be putting treats in a snuffle mat

Other activities:

The dog can pick up emoji-balls or feels-balls and then the child acts out a one-minute skit about that emotion
Or the child can pick up those, toss them into baskets labeled sometimes, often, rarely (and then tell the dog about it)
If you write out single-word topics on paper, the child can choose one and then talk to the dog about it
Tell the child that the dog is having a problem (one the child has) and the child can give the dog advice
Write down a challenge for the child (one they might like to work on) onto a Post-It note, put the Post-It in a toilet paper tube, and then the child can help the dog find it among a bunch of other toilet paper tubes. The child can then work on that challenge during the week and later on, tell the dog how it went.

What are the benefits?

Canis therapy is oriented to reach the next goals:

Positive emotions and mental abilities development.
Motor skills and disordered locomotor functions improvement.
Abolition of fear, anxiety, aggression, stress, mistrust and absent mindedness.
Friendliness and communication development.
Significant improvement of patient's physical well-being.

Dog therapy is watching the animal, close contact with it through communication, feeding, games and care.

Therapeutic dogs should have such qualities as:

Aggression absence.

Developed sociability, friendling.

Negative response to loud noises, sudden and quick movements absence.

Well-balanced temper.

Dog therapy is acceptable not only for patients with neurological, psychological and emotional disorders, but also for elder people and physically impaired people (blindness, diseases of the musculoskeletal system).

Dogs cure people due to their devotion, friendliness, movements, touches, color of coat, breath. Dogs make patients' physical and emotional state better, rise them from the depression and apathy, distract their mind from grey thoughts and loneliness.

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