Essay On Dog Therapy

Positive and negative social behaviours and the development of social skills were mainly observed and examined in the studies, in terms of the frequency that they increase or decrease. The frequency of smiling and laughing showed to increase when children were exposed to therapy dogs. This behaviour was directed towards the therapy dogs, as well as, towards the children’s mothers and the therapists. Following this, eye contact also improved, where children made voluntary eye contact with their mothers. Also, some children showed some hesitation, reluctance and anxiety to interact with the therapy dogs, but quickly overcame this towards the end of their sessions, where they learnt to enjoy the interactions with the dogs and therapists, as discussed by two studies. Furthermore, most of the studies found that children showed an increase in appropriate social interactions, prosocial behaviour, the frequency of social initiations, were more attentive during tasks and more responsive to instructions and feedback. Consequently, as children’s …show more content…
There was also some indication that the effects found were generalised to the classroom and home environments (?), however, this was not the case for all studies or to a significant degree. Also, it is apparent that not all participants benefited as much as others, suggesting that dog therapy is potentially highly individual (?). Also, it was reported that the children were disappointment when the therapy dog was absent (?) and one child was so fixated with the dog that he became so possessive of the dog that he did not allow other children to get close to him or the dog, affecting his interaction with peers (?), further showing that dog therapy can be limited in its transferability. See Table 2 (appendix C) for a summary of the findings from all