thing which comes to your mind
love and affection you can see human
animal interaction because there is a
human and there is an animal interacting
you can see because of an animal that is
smile and happiness on a human space and
because of the human animal interaction
even the animals are happy can never see
that the animal is stressed in each and
every picture you can see that the
animal is happy so to trace about the
human animal interaction field in India
if we go to see even in our
methodological things the human animal
interaction has been there so if you see
the doctor it is being surrounded by a
cow and a dog or decades ago if if you
could see people used to have farms
people used to have cows people used to
have dogs sheeps so animals were an
integral part of our human society and
humans always were dependent on animals
in their day to day lives but nowadays
there are nuclear families people stay
in flats so people don’t have that kind
of animals with them but nowadays people
term it as pets or domesticated animals
so people have dogs people have cats but
because of this lifestyle change there
there are lifestyle diseases as well
like stress hyperactivity see loneliness
depression and anxiety and to tackle
these we are now looking for different
options to help us reduce the stress and
make ourselves happy we are animal
angels basically are working towards
helping people through interaction with
animals we are making the human will be
a much better way so humans need
unconditional love and acceptance and
who better than animals to give us that
love and that that affection so a hug
from a therapy dog can give them all the
unconditional love they need and at this
point I would like to introduce a tepee
dog Pepe over here so that everyone
present over here can be happy and pay
[Applause]
so who would like to come and give her a
so this is how interaction with animals
is you feel happy everyone is smiling in
the room so that’s how important animals
so Pepe uh I would like to introduce
Pepe Pepe is a therapy dog thank you
so Pepe is a therapy dog she’s five year
old a golden retriever and she’s been
working with animal angels for the past
four and a half years she was trained as
a therapy dog and she has worked in
different settings he started working
with children with developmental
disabilities yes ha ha she’s saying
that’s it that’s that’s our peppe’s to
give you a brief about animal assisted
therapy and the field which is a part of
human animal interaction so animal
assisted therapy started in 1961 in us
there was a child psychiatrist called as
boris Levinson who started animal
assisted therapy and while he was a
working with his cases he used to take
his therapy dogs jingle he observed that
when there is a therapy dog in the room
the children were more open to share
about their feelings and they were more
open to speak up in presence of a
therapy dog and that’s where animal
assisted therapy or pet therapy came
into being and in India it took us
almost 50 years after that in 2003 a
mineral cow is over who is the founder
of animal England’s foundation she was
doing her master’s in clinical
psychology and during that time she got
a chance to train a dog for a school and
that school was a school for children
with special needs and then she was also
learning cannae behavior at that time
and she thought that if the dog can be
trained for the children and not just as
a guard dog for the school it could be
beneficial for these children in a much
better way so then she started
researching and she found out that there
is no documented research done in India
and that’s where animal angels came into
existence we did a first research
program at the
we’re on the edge in the school in
Anthony and for over the first three
years we did a pilot program we
documented each and every part of it and
from there animal angels came into
existence the findings which we got at
at that point were so amazing that there
were children with hearing and speech
impairment and they couldn’t speak for
further entire life like up to 10 to 12
years but through the motivation the
therapy dog gave the therapy dogs our
first therapy dogs name was could be she
passed away last year but her memories
will always be with us the hearing and
speech impaired children tried or
uttered the first word as as the therapy
dogs named cootie so that was a level of
motivation these children got while they
interacted with the therapy dog and the
funniest thing was the therapy dog
belong to the principal of the school so
every day the dog used to come with the
principal to a school interact with the
children and go back again the principal
we got registered as an NGO and our
vision is basically to create awareness
about this new field in India and to
reach out to as many people as we can
and spread the healing benefits of
animals on humans so what we do under
the animal angels we we basically work
in the field of animal assisted therapy
so to give you a brief about what animal
assisted therapy actually is animal
assisted therapy is different
alternative mode of therapy we’re
trained therapy animal it can be a
therapy dog there can be different
animals as well like rabbits cats birds
guinea pigs but dogs being more
interactive we usually prefer dogs and
in presence of a trained therapy animal
the the entire therapy session is
conducted just a small example for that
say there is a child with physical
disability and who is not able to walk
and he he has physiotherapy activity
like walk this room for five times but
there is no motivation for the child to
walk or make that extra effort to get
that he’ll happily sit in his wheelchair
but when we asked him to walk the dog he
is extremely motivated to hold the leash
he himself strives to bend down pick the
leash and walk the dog for not five
times but more than five times so that
is the level of motivation or the
bonding which these therapy animals give
with
help these children to attain something
which they rather normal therapies could
not do we also conduct animal assisted
activities where you not only work with
children with special needs or with a
certain population we conduct different
programs so when we started in 2003 the
the challenges were like we used to go
and tell people that this is something
new we are working in this field and
through our documented research we used
to put two different Institute’s so we
started doing breeding programs for
normal children one thing which we
observed that animals are unconditional
they don’t judge humans on how we are or
how we look or how we behave dog is
equally going to be happy when he is
interacting with me or when he is
interacting with someone else we started
doing reading programs for smaller
children basically who have just started
learning or just started reading what we
found out was that the children were
more happy to read out to a dog rather
than in the classroom setting because
the dot dog is not going to judge if if
the child is going to make a mistake the
dog is going to look in the book when we
say point so the dog is trained in that
way and it becomes a fun interactive way
to encourage children to read out we
also did introduction to animals program
where we should take different animals
in nurseries because lot of things
parents do not allow children to
interact with the dog or interact with
any other animal but we used to promote
in human animal interaction and
interaction with different animals then
animal assisted education is another
field so we also work in normal schools
with children with learning disabilities
like I mentioned the reading program so
in the education setting it is basically
the entire syllabus we select children
were basically slow in education and
then we work with them in a similar
manner and research being one of the
most important thing because we are the
pioneers in India doing this kind of
work and unless we do a documented
research or unless we document each and
every fact we are not going to grow this
field in India so research is one of the
most important thing which we conduct as
we are the pioneers we trained
professionals from medical and mental
health background in the field of animal
there be people who have done their
masters in psychology or physiotherapy
we train them into animal assisted
therapy so that they can then extend
this kind of work to different settings
and they can spread our work this is one
of a beautiful case studies this child
is a child with Down syndrome his name
is Mulder and this is therapy dog genie
genie is a pug and she is now six or
seven years old he was not able to walk
for the initial three to four years his
mother and his parents were doing
different therapies like physiotherapy
and different other modes of therapy so
that he could at least stand on his own
and walk during the same time therapy
dog genie was being trained and
fortunately the dog was staying in the
same building we came to know about
Millar and then we started eighty
sessions for Millar the point they too
gelled so beautifully and it was so well
that Muller wanted to do so many things
for Gd so then we found out that Millar
was motivated to a certain extent that
he could use to keep genie on a chair
and then Millar you should try to stand
up on his own to just to reach out to
genie and better and slowly slowly after
six months we found out that Millar was
running down with chilli and he should
take her for walks every day and now
after three to four years Muller has his
own dog now he has got a beagle whose
name is toffee and now Millar plays with
the dog Mijares started walking he
started going to school so this is the
changer and the level of motivation
which basically requires which animals
are basically able to provide these are
the areas of implementation where animal
angels has started so we started working
with children with special needs we
started visiting different schools
different special schools in the initial
years it was be approaching schools to
tell them what animal assisted therapy
is and how how we conduct therapy now
the situation has changed after 16 years
now people come to us saying that we
want to start animal assisted therapy
our Center so this is a big attitudinal
change which we could see in people so
the challenges when we started with dogs
are not hygienic we cannot have a dog in
a school the dog can bark the dog can
bite so there were so many different
appliances each and every initiative had
when we
but drafting different roles and
responsibilities drafting the standards
of practices so there were so many
challenges when you started animal
assisted therapy in India though the
spiel was there for 50 years in u.s. the
method of application in u.s. is
completely different than the method of
application in India so we started
training more dogs we started training
more professionals and into this field
and slowly slowly we started
implementing 18 different settings so we
started with children with special needs
then we did the library programs where
we encourage children to read out to a
dog and our program was called as tales
of joy then we introduced the animal
assisted therapy in hospitals for cancer
patients so we worked with supply Cancer
Centre we worked with Ruby Hall Cancer
Centre in Pune where our therapy animals
were there to help the patients deal
with post-operative stress because a lot
of times there is there’s a lot of
stress when when people are going
through terminal illness and animals
acted as a medium to help these these
patients recover that terminal illness
and what we everytime tell is that we
cannot take the disability away or we
cannot take the illness away but we can
at least help in improving the quality
of life through interaction with animals
so we did the program with hospitals we
started working with old-age homes
because even at old-age homes there is
problems like depression loneliness
anxiety so therapy dogs were there to
fill that gap we did a couple of
programs for post-roman stress where we
worked with a Mumbai railway police
after the seven-eleven trail blast we
worked with the Mumbai Police for after
the 26/11 blasts so there were policemen
who were coming and hugging the dog and
sharing their experiences about how they
lost their friend and who was working
with them so dogs held even we see that
policemen who were so strong and so
unbreakable worth coming down and
hugging the dog and sharing their
experiences when when they were they
were with the dog and now after so many
years this is our recent program so
these therapy dogs are now working at
the Mumbai International Airport
so we have also started introducing dogs
in in corporate settings and these dogs
are working there as therapy dogs as
comfort dogs and Pepe Goldie and
sunshine other three dogs were visiting
Mumbai Airport for the last one year and
they’re helping the passengers reduce a
travel stress and travel anxiety so
people who are flying who have long long
flights or delayed flights people
usually come and spend time with with
them at the airport and to leave you
with with just at all animals for human
wellness so what we can learn from
animals what I have learned from Pepe or
what I’ve learned from our dogs is lemon
present loved unconditionally
be yourself be loyal you should trust we
should not hold grudges play is always
good we have to take time and play and
have an happy attitude and that’s what
animals teaches us as humans thank you [Applause]