What is a Therapy Dog?....Meet Baxter, our Hero! |
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Therapy Dog refers to a dog trained to provide affection and comfort to people in hospitals, retirement homes, nursing homes, mental institutions, schools, and stressful situations such as disaster areas. The concept of a therapy dog is often attributed to Elaine Smith, an American who worked as a registered nurse for a time in England. Smith noticed how well patients responded to visits by a certain chaplain and his canine companion, a golden retriever. Upon returning to the United States in 1976, Smith started a program for training dogs to visit institutions. Over the years health care professionals have noticed the therapeutic effect of animal companionship, such as relieving stress, lowering blood pressure, and raising spirits, and the demand for therapy dogs continues to grow. In recent years, therapy dogs have been enlisted to help children overcome speech and emotional disorders. |
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Therapy dogs come in all sizes and breeds. The most important characteristic of a therapy dog is its temperament. A good therapy dog must be friendly, patient, confident, gentle, and at ease in all situations. Therapy dogs must enjoy human contact and be content to be petted and handled, sometimes clumsily. A therapy dog's primary job is to allow unfamiliar people to make physical contact with it and to enjoy that contact. Children in particular enjoy hugging animals; adults usually enjoy simply petting the dog. The dog might need to be lifted onto, or climb onto, an individual's lap or bed and sit or lie comfortably there. Many dogs contribute to the visiting experience by performing small tricks for their audience or by playing carefully structured games. Therapy dogs are not service or assistance dogs. |
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**DOG READ YOUR FACIAL EXPRESIONS!
A new study has found that dogs are able to make eye contact and take cues from humans in a manner similar to a 6-month-old infant. Here, a brief guide:
What did the study find?
Dogs, like human babies, read our facial expressions. They don't just rely on verbal cues to ascertain what humans want. They also use eye contact to anticipate our desires. "Dogs are receptive to human communication in a manner that was previously attributed only to humans," says one of the study's co-authors, Jozsef Topal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
How did researchers come to this conclusion?
Topal and his associates worked with 29 canine test subjects.
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The dogs were shown a video of a woman who would call them, stare straight at them to get their attention, and then look down at an object beside her.
Then the dogs were shown a second video in which the woman would silently turn her head and stare at the object without ever making direct eye contact. In most cases, the dogs followed the woman's gaze in the first video. In the second video, in which she made no direct eye contact, the dogs didn't follow her gaze. Similar experiments have been conducted with babies, and 6-month-old infants exhibited the same behavior as the dogs.
How did dogs come to behave this way?
Topal thinks it's a trait the animals developed as they worked and bonded with generations of humans. "Dogs have evolved to sharing their lives with humans," he says. "And they gained new skills that support their social interaction with humans." Give me a break, says dog trainer Deleta Jones. "Dogs normally speak [to each other] through body language and facial expression," she says. This is obviously just "natural to them."
What have other studies into the doggy mind found?
A study published last year in Learning & Behavior found that dogs were more prone to beg for food from a person who was looking at them than from someone paying them no mind. Stanley Coren, an expert in canine behavior, has found that in terms of developmental ability, dogs are on par with human 2-year-olds.
What does this mean for my dog and me?
"This should reinforce that if we want our dog's attention, we should be clear about it," says Adam Goldfarb with the Humane Society of the United States. "For those people who talk to their dog in a baby-talk voice, they should keep it up. Your dog knows that you're talking to him or her and will pay more attention."
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**OUR HAPPY TAILS OF THE MONTH
**Puppy Crate Training
Over time the crate will become your puppy's own private area which they will grow to love and feel secure in.
- One of the first and most important uses of the crate is in the puppy housebreaking process. Crate training is the best way to quickly teach your puppy to eliminate (go to the toilet) outside.
- Crating our puppies teaches them to chew on the toys we provide to them and prevents them from chewing on the things we don't want them to chew on (shoes, furniture, curtains etc.). This is the key to establishing good habits in our dogs and preventing destructive habits which can be difficult to rectify.
- When your young puppy is in his/her crate he is safe from any number of dangerous household items. Unfortunately many puppies are severely injured and killed every year as a result of chewing wires, ingesting poisons or eating foreign objects.
- NEVER USE THE CRATE AS A PUNISHMENT. A HAPPY PUPPY MUST TO FEEL SECURE & CONFORTABLE IN HIS/HER OWN SPACE.
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Houston SPCA Adoption Services The Houston SPCA always has many great animals looking for new homes. Our adoption program places more animals into loving homes than all other area shelters combined! |
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