“In the field of child and adolescent mental health, therapy with dogs can help the development of a number of our young patients. Although there are very few studies to support this, every day there are more private and public examples showing this.

Our rehabilitation service has organized two different types of groups to work with the dogs of Canis Grup; one, a therapy group, and the other, a reading group. Both have been successful, attractive to young people, improving the atmosphere, motivating reading and change, the expressing of affection, relieving apathy momentarily and enabling a different level of interaction.

Nit and Mel carry out this role very well under the supervision of Laura and the guidance of the leader of the therapy session. Working with dogs in therapy makes for a lot of play in the sessions, and that allows us, as therapists, to be creative, imaginative and patient, as the relationship which is established with the dog already has a positive effect on the emotional atmosphere, and, at the same time you can see the relationship between patients mediated by the dog (or dogs).

In 2017, we presented a paper on emotional competencies and dogs in the sessions on Emotional Education at Barcelona University. Information on this can be found on the website of ICE at the university.”