Many people have accepted the use of therapy dogs to help people in various ways. However, a study was done on children ages 7 -9 who were diagnosed with ADHD and had never taken medication to control it.
Sabrina E. B. Schuck, PhD, MA, executive director of the UCI Child Development Center and assistant professor in residence in the Department of Pediatrics at UCI School of Medicine found that children with ADHD who received canine assisted intervention (CAI) experienced a reduction in inattention and an improvement in social skills.
They also found that the children who were in the CAI group had significantly fewer behavior problems over time than those treated without therapy dogs. This gives parents of children who do not want to use mediation an alternative treatment.
Connections: Animal Assisted Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias by Pam Osbourne, ISBN: 78-0-9993761-0-2, 144 pgs., $19.95, self-published
This is a great book for people who want to become involved in animal assisted therapy or who are already involved. The book is divided into three major parts with subsections in each part. It starts with the author’s personal experience with her parents and how their pet dog helped them. This section helps the reader understand more about Alzheimer’s and other dementias, the way is changes a person’s life and how to recognize the symptoms.
Part II explains what it takes to have your pet dog become a therapy dog. It outlines how the dog can help someone suffering from these diseases. The book also tells people who do not have access to an animal assistance group what to train their dog to do to be a therapy dog. The book does not outline how to train the dog, only what to train the dog.
Part III I feel is the best part of the book. It gives the reader a collection of activities that the handler can have the dog do to engage the patients. Each game or activity has a colored graph that shows the suitability of each game for the cognitive/functional impairment level of the patient.
Overall this is a unique book that can be a huge help for the handler and the therapy dog. The print, page and text quality of the book are good. It includes many color photos that show dogs performing the activities listed. However, many people will need the help of a professional dog trainer to teach the dog some of the activities listed in the book.