A few kms away Rakhi Chaterjee’s six-year-old Labrador Crunk and seven-month-old Golden Retriever Kiara are undergoing training. In a matter of days both will be eligible for the role of reading assistance therapy dogs (where dogs become the audience for the children who have reading problems) as they start visiting the Prasanna Autism Centre, where Padmaja Godlbole’s one-and-a-half year old labrador Sophie is already at work. There are many more such special dogs going around in Pune — Tyson, Sushma Date’s three-year-old Boxer, a visiting therapy dog at Manavya, the home for children infected by AIDS and Sunil Avhad’s three-month-old Lab Goldie that is being trained to assist disabled children.
All these gracious canines together make up Pune’s Animal Angels, a nascent group formed by Minal Kavishwar, clinical therapist and animal lover who introduced Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) for special children about a year ago in Pune-with amazing results.
“While different animals are used for different requirements all over the world, dogs have been found to be the most powerful motivating factor for special children,’’ says Kavishwar as she watches six-year-old Rahul Patil happily playing with Sophie. Till a few months ago, Rahul, an autistic child, would stay lost in his own world at the Prasanna Autistic Centre. When Sophie entered his life as a therapy dog, he initially studiously ignored her. But her persistence drew him to start patting her and today they are inseparable. “Social interaction a big problem with autistic children as is speech and a dog helps overcome both. They start to ask for say the ball when it’s time to play with the dog. Also they find the animal non-judgmental and undemanding of them unlike humans, and this further encourages speech and interaction,’’ says Godbole who also runs the autistic centre and is documenting the results shown in her children at the centre after the introduction of AAT by Kavishwar.
Kavishwar’s own first attempt of using animals as therapist aides began in the year 2002 on a project initiated by Shyamashree Bhosale, Principal ‘Jidda’, a school for children with mental retardation and physical disabilities in Thane, who got Kutti a Labrador as an in-house pet for the children. Kavishwar immediately started to notice an improvement in the motor skills, attention span and social skills of the children-and Animals Angels was born. Today Mumbai has about eight dogs enrolled as therapy dogs while the number in Pune has risen to six in the past one year.
What has especially encouraged Kavishwar also is the number of households in Pune that have come forward to volunteer their pets as therapists, as also their own time as the owner needs to be there with the pet during the sessions.
“I think it’s wonderful that our pets can help these children- it’s a great attempt and we are more than happy to volunteer for this,’’ says Rakhi Chaterjee a homemaker while husband Sudhindra is an IT professional with Cognizant.
Kavishwar and her volunteers of course first test a volunteer dog’s temperament before enrolling him or her as a therapist and commencing training. “Dogs respond a lot to body language and since the body language of the special children is very different-they are liable to tantrums, grabbing and sudden screams-we have to ensure that the dogs do not feel threatened by the sudden movements and mood change,” she explains.
But invariably most dogs do not even require very strict instructions or training, admits Kavishwar as they almost always tend to display an intrinsic sensitivity and understanding towards the special children. In fact Bhosale of Jidda School succinctly sums up the entire experiment in one single line garnered from her own experience with Kutti. “The thing is that for the dogs, all children are normal children.”