More and more people say that Cano therapy or therapy with dogs is the perfect solution to certain diseases or situations for people of any age. Let's see what it is and its great benefits.
What is Cano Therapy?
Cano therapy is a form of therapy with dogs where the rehabilitation of people (children, young people, adults or the elderly) with some type of physical, mental or emotional disability is sought to work.
To do this, trained dogs are used according to what you want to work in order to stimulate the motivation and participation of the patient in different activities that will help in their improvement.
The most common breeds for this are usually the Labrador and the Golden Retriever, but according to their function many other breeds can intervene.
The important thing is that the therapy can be trained, not only to fulfill its work of help, but to withstand uncomfortable situations for him such as some noises or that touch sensitive areas of his body, such as ears, tail or snout. The behavior of these Cano therapy pirates must be exemplary!
How Cano therapy arises
Cano therapy emerges from the 70s of the last century, when a nurse named Elaine Smith checked how her patients reacted wonderfully to the visit of the Golden Retriever who always accompanied the chaplain.
That's when he realized how good it could be to work with dogs on people's physical, mental or emotional recovery. For this reason he began studying canine psychology and founded the first program to train dogs destined for therapy.
Benefits of Cano therapy
Depending on the problem for working with therapy dogs you can talk about some more concrete benefits or others, but broadly speaking, the benefits of Cano therapy are:
Increasing the relationship and contact with a dog favors later facilitating the relationship with other people. This is ideal for shy people or people with autism.
Stress and depressive symptoms are reduced.
When working with an animal, it becomes an "intermediary" between therapist and patient, breaking that barrier between the two and favoring work.
It promotes movement and movement, helping in postures, muscle development, etc.
It favors attention on something in particular. For example, in Dogs and Letters they work to increase children's motivation towards reading by introducing dogs that have been trained to listen to children as they read.
Without a doubt, our furry best friends are our best therapy!