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Animals, MLSS and You

As indicated on other pages of this website, Vicky relies quite a lot on the wisdom and comfort of her animals. She works with animals within the business in two distinct ways:

1. Animal-Assisted SFBT: This is where Vicky will employ one or more of her animals to help a person achieve their own goals for the therapy.

2. Therapy for animals (dogs & horses mainly) who challenge their people (owners).


Animal-Assisted Solution Focused Brief Therapy

Vicky’s animals have shown themselves to be great conversation pieces. People seem to feel better able to talk about anything and everything when they are stroking or playing with an animal.

There are various pieces of research that support the use of animals in promoting the well-being of people which can be used as an evidence base for Animal-Assisted SFBT. One of these studies showed that the presence of an animal helps keep the attention of the client and predisposes the client to respond favourable to the therapist. (And sometimes Vicky needs all the help she can get!)

In addition, when Vicky is co-working with animals, the therapy atmosphere is much less formal, which again often appeals to clients and makes it easier for them to talk.

The presence of an animal helps people to focus on something positive and rewarding. Very often, the people Vicky gets to meet are weighed down by not being listened to, not fitting in, not feeling competent or useful. When with the horses or dog however, people absolutely are useful, competent, listened to and usually both licked AND liked.

Animals in therapy help a person to practice focusing outside themselves, and give Vicky lots of opportunities to notice and name the person’s strengths, competencies and coping skills. These excellent characteristics and skills can later be put to use to help the person reach their own aims.

In addition to bringing out the competencies already present within the person, the opportunity to interact with an animal can teach new skills. Skills of observation, coordination, learning about cause and effect, hygiene, improving fine motor skills, and practicing social skills are just a few potential new skills that come immediately to mind. Animals teach us about seeing things from their point of view (otherwise they won’t play with us!), building a partnership, accepting and giving affection as well as respecting another culture. Often within one session there are opportunities to point out how the person has made one small change that has led to a bigger change in the animal’s behaviour. All of these opportunities will help a person to develop more robust social skills.

Animals have much in common with people who have autism, thus are quite well suited to developing a therapeutic relationship with such people. Animals live in the moment, for example and they arrive at the therapy session with no ideas about what the client ‘needs’ or what would make the client happy (much like Vicky actually). They do not use emotionally-laden language and are easy to ‘read’ in that sense. Deceit and sarcasm are not part of the animal language, and it is nice for people to recognise that the animals are ALSO confused by much of the emotion or hidden meanings present in human to human interactions. At least those of us who use logical, fact based language can know that we are in good company sharing our preference for straight forward talking with animals.

The aims of Animal-Assisted SFBT, and the principles that govern the therapy are the same as SFBT, namely:

  • If something is not broken, we won’t fix it (so if your traumatic past, for example, is not something you want to revisit, we do not have to talk about it)
  • If something isn’t working, we will stop doing it and do something different
  • If something IS working we will do more of it
  • Small changes lead to bigger changes, so we only need to do a little thing first
  • ‘Solutions’ are not necessarily related to the ‘problems’
  • There are ALWAYS exceptions to the ‘problems’ which we will want to learn more about because something is working during these times
  • Part of getting the future we want involves describing it in detail
  • People already have at least some of the resources they require in order to make the changes they want.
It is easy to refer yourself for Animal-Assisted SFBT. Click on the ‘Contact Us’ link and ask for an appointment, saying you would like to work with Henry (and Vicky of course). It is possible on some occasions, for people to combine therapy with the horses, so if this is your aim, you and Vicky will have to have a chat about how to arrange it.

See also: Animal-Assisted SFBT Ethics

For more information about the possible benefits of animals in therapy, you might look at the following which is an article written by an adult with autism and her passion for horses:
http://www.autism.org.uk/nas/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=120&a=6616

Further reading and references:

Kale, M. (1992) What You Already Knew – Fluffy and Fido are Good for You. InterActions., 10 (1) Reprinted on www.deltasociety.org/AnimalsHealthAdultsKnew.htm

Pichot, T. and Coulter, M. (2007) Animal-Assisted Brief Therapy: A Solution-Focused Approach. New York: The Haworth Press.

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Site Last Updated: 13/11/2008 07:14:52