Animal-Assisted Play Therapy

OK, sure. I’ve studied filial therapy with its founders and creators, Bernard and Louise Guerney, and have been involved in using it, teaching it, and writing about it ever since the early 80s. I am really impressed with how well it works with families. I’ve never seen another intervention for families with younger children that has worked as well, because it is truly a blend of family therapy and play therapy. On the animal side of things, I’m very involved in AAPT, which actually has some similarities with filial therapy. In both, we use play as the primary way of communicating and working through problems with children in a therapeutic setting—in a therapeutic way, with therapeutic goals. Then we add in an animal that helps us in a variety of ways to reach those goals. It is really a combination of Animal-Assisted Therapy and play therapy. We keep the interactions very playful and light because that adds to the emotional safety for kids, but at the same time we’re trying to accomplish therapeutic goals. When I began getting into animal-assisted play therapy (AAPT), I realized that even though I had spent my life with animals, I needed to know more. I have been studying animal-related topics for 20 years, but I really became immersed in it 10 years ago, where I’ve been studying dog behavior, socialization, and training. That is how I ended up becoming a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant. Mostly, I train other mental health professionals. I have a small practice where I still see child and family therapy clients, and I do a lot of writing and teaching. I also provide direct services to families, usually those with children, when they are having behavior problems with their dogs.

So incorporating an animal in play therapy helps you meet therapeutic goals. You have certainly contributed to the field with your work in the filial therapy, and now also for AAPT.

I’ve been really lucky. I’ve had the great honor and fun opportunity to travel all over the world and provide trainings in filial therapy. In the last several years, AAPT training has become more of an international venture, too. I have a coleader from the U.K., Tracie Faa-Thompson (VanFleet & Faa-Thompson, 2010), who is a play therapist and horse specialist. She is amazing with horses and we do workshops in the U.K., Europe, and here in the U.S.

That is excellent. I think many people are aware of animal-assisted activities, where a dog might go into a nursing home, or a hospital or a library, but they might not be familiar with Animal-Assisted Play Therapy. Could you explain the difference between the two?

Yes. That sometimes gets confusing because of the way the terms are used. The Pet Partner’s Program (that was formerly the Delta Society), has definitions of Animal-Assisted Activities and Animal-Assisted Therapy, and then I’ll share what I’m doing, which is a little bit different. Animal-Assisted Activities are programs where you don’t necessarily have a licensed professional involved, but people do have training and they take their dogs into the places like you mentioned: hospitals, nursing homes, visitation programs, which are wonderful programs. Animal-assisted therapy (AAT), technically, is the involvement of an appropriately credentialed and trained professional who works toward therapeutic goals. That could be a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a psychotherapist, a counselor, or a speech and hearing therapist. Those kinds of professionals might be able to involve a dog or other animals to assist them in their work. Aubrey Fine is a psychologist who has been instrumental in AAT, and Cindy Chandler has been at the forefront in the American Counseling Association (ACA) in developing Animal-Assisted Therapy in the counseling field. My interests lie in animal-assisted play therapy. What is different from other forms of animal-assisted therapy is the play therapy component. We are trying to create a playful atmosphere, using animal–human play interactions as part of the therapy. We facilitate it in a way that is consistent with play therapy, but everything is a little bit lighter. Playfulness is an important component for creating that emotional safety. Often when we think of traditional animal-assisted therapy, we have dogs who are a little bit quieter. In AAPT, we can use dogs who are a bit more jazzed up because we are doing play activities indoors and sometimes outdoors. So we want dogs who are playful and really enjoy interacting with people. This is probably true of animal-assisted therapy, but the playful part is very important to us. We want nice stable animals who are willing to engage in lots of play.

So the animals have to be people-friendly?

Yes, and I think that’s probably true of all animal therapies, but this goes a little bit beyond that. If we start playing a hide-and-seek game, we want the dogs to be interested enough that they’ll go look for the child. You want some of that to be a natural interest (even though we could probably use treats to build that interest), but we want animals that genuinely seek out play and interaction with kids or adults. While we use AAPT with children, it is actually very appropriate throughout the life span because we all could do with a little bit of lightness in our lives. It helps us step back and see our problems more clearly and be able to work them through a little bit better.

Oh, that’s so true. So the animals have to be willing to engage in play?

Yes, for the most part you want playful animals. One of the things we do is to create a playful, lighter tone in the session, because we know when we try to talk seriously to the kids we often don’t get to the real root of things. Children can sometimes resist that, or they just don’t have the capacity yet to talk in an abstract way about their problems. But we often see them playing about their problems. There are a number of different ways we can use this playfulness, but certainly having an animal who is willing to play is an important piece of it.

Excellent, and thank you for clarifying that. In your book, Play Therapy with Kids and Canines (2008), you discussed the rationale for AAPT, and I wonder if you could talk about that and what some of the principles are behind the approach?

Yes. Basically there are a few different aspects to how we think about doing AAPT. One of the things that is important is that we need to consider the animal’s welfare just as we’re thinking about the welfare of our clients. Because the animals are being conscripted into this, we really have to be aware of whether or not they enjoy what we’ve asked them to do, or if they are just tolerating it. The rationale is that children relate quite readily to animals. Gail Melson at Purdue University has written a great deal about how important animals are to children. Mary Renck Jalongo commented, “Companion animals should matter to educators, if for no other reason than that they matter so much to children” (2004, p. 17). That should be true of counselors and therapists as well. Kids naturally gravitate toward animals unless they’ve learned to be afraid of them. The animals provide what’s called a social lubricant effect, in that, if a client of any age finds it difficult to trust other humans, they might be able to relate to an animal more readily. Attachment theory is the primary underlying theory that I’m focused on when doing AAPT. I’m really looking for how we create good relationships. Whether our relationships are with a therapist, with our parents, with our children, with each other as professionals or colleagues, or in our families, it is almost exactly the same kind of considerations as when we are interacting with animals.

Can I ask you a question about the social lubricant effect? Just to clarify, are you saying that if a child bonds with an animal that might carry over to their attachment with people?

Yes. This can occur when people are unable to connect with other people. It could range anywhere from being a shy individual to having experienced massive trauma. If we feel safe with the animals and are able to create some sort of connection with them, there are definitely indications that this carries over to human relationships. I’ve seen it happen many times in therapy where you have a child who never speaks. They might have made some progress in play therapy, but if you try to talk with them they just clam up. Then you bring the animal into the picture and suddenly they’re talking a mile a minute. There’s something that happens when the animal is there; perhaps it creates an additional sense of safety, perhaps less focus on the child, less self-consciousness. Whatever it is, I’ve often seen that kids then connect to the therapist. You might be the first person the child can trust because you’ve shared your own animal with them. If they like the animal, they start liking you a little better; feeling more comfortable with you. That forms a bridge to improved human connections.

Fascinating. Anything more that you want to share about the principles or the rationale?

Yes. One of the things that I’ve noticed in some programs, whether it’s a visitation program or other Animal-Assisted Therapy work, is that the animal has become a tool to the process, and the focus isn’t that much on the animal. This isn’t good service to the animal, and it doesn’t make our therapy as useful as it could be. I’ve seen examples where a dog has been asked to do a certain type of work, and you can see the dog looks absolutely miserable, but the human handler doesn’t seem to be aware of that. We emphasize watching our animals, their behavior, and their body language; making sure that they are enjoying it. Sometimes we might ask the animals to do something that they aren’t that keen on, but it’s never aversive. For the majority of interactions we want the animal to have a good time and to be motivated to do that kind of work. So the dog isn’t just being petted, although that might be part of what we do, but the dog is also playing and doing things that the dog might be interested in naturally, and so they enjoy the work. We focus a lot on having equal and reciprocal respect between our human clients and the animals, having a really good relationship with them. It is actually a metaphor for the therapeutic relationship. How we interact with our own animal in this process says a lot to our clients about us and what they can expect of us, and it also models what relationships should be. That’s why I think there has to be reciprocity in the relationship. Of course, we’re concerned about safety, we want to make sure the animals are well trained. The final thing for now is that AAPT is a process-oriented therapy, so we’re looking at the process and the relationships and the interactions. We have specific goals, but we focus on the process. Part of being a play therapist is to be creative, and say, “Okay, how can I take what just happened and use it within the play therapy process so that it is therapeutically valuable?” We always have goals; we are always working with our human clients toward those goals. It just takes some extra creativity to figure out, “Okay, my dog really likes (x), so how do I build (x) into an intervention that’s playful and helps meet the client’s goals?”

That’s a really clear way to think about the process. You keep mentioning reciprocity and that’s so interesting because it speaks of Systems Theory and how people are in reciprocal relationships, and this is what you’re saying happens with the child and the pet. I can see that it could benefit the relationship the child has with family members in an isomorphic way—if the child first develops a relationship with a pet that often carries over to the relationship with the therapist, and then has the potential to affect family relationships.

Yes. My own training is in Family Therapy so I tend to think like a Family Therapist. I think about systems. When we focus on building mutually respectful relationships with animals in therapy, it carries over. Now we know animals have feelings, cognitive abilities, and preferences, so we need to honor those. We are trying to incorporate that same type of thoughtful involvement of the animal in the process as we would if we were working with a human co-therapist.

So the dog really functions like a co-therapist. And you make these decisions on a much deeper level rather than just bringing a dog into the therapy room.

Exactly. I think there’s a temptation that because you have a nice animal at home you might think, “Oh, I’ll just take him in to work with me and share him with my clients.” There is vastly more to it than that. We aren’t doing the best by the animals or our clients if we do that without getting proper training, without having a deep understanding of animal body language and what our animals are trying to tell us. Recently, I have heard of cases where people took their nice pet dogs into the therapy room and the child was bitten; they didn’t understand how to read their dog’s body language. The dog was probably giving signals all over the place that “This is not comfortable for me.” The child might not understand that it’s not okay to wrap their arms around a dog’s neck (most dogs really hate that feeling), but it’s a very natural human thing to do. In order for us to conduct AAPT in a safe, ethical, and therapeutically effective manner, we have a lot to learn—about the animals, our relationships with those animals, how we train those animals, and then how we watch what goes on in the therapeutic session.

Excellent. Can you give some examples of an animal’s body language that might indicate that the dog isn’t comfortable or is stressed?

Yes. There are lots and I’ll share some of the really common ones. We are all trained observers of human behavior and we need to start applying that to animals and learning how they communicate. If you see two dogs who are meeting for the first time, often they approach at an angle, and don’t make direct eye contact, which they actually don’t like. In fact, sustained direct eye contact is a sign of aggression to dogs. Or if dogs turn their heads to the side and look away that might be a sign of stress. Then I watch the rest of the dog’s body language to see what’s going on. A high tail that’s wagging somewhat tightly usually means that the dog is stressed. Sometimes, they will flick out their tongue and lick their lips or noses; that’s a sign of stress. You can look for “whale eyes,” where their eyes are large and turned so you can see white on the sides, which often is a sign of big stress. The last one I’ll mention is if they freeze their whole body; if they just go quiet, they are probably stressed. If nothing changes, that behavior is usually followed by a growl, and after that comes a snap, and then a bite. So you want to catch it early, when they freeze. When you’re learning animal body language you want to put all the separate signals together as “What’s the whole body of the animal doing?” You also look at the context they’re in. We know dogs don’t like to be crowded into corners. So if I have a dog who does a turn away and licks her lips, and she shows whale-eyes, and I have a client blocking the dog’s way out of that corner, the context is telling me that dog has no escape route, or can’t remove herself from the situation. That’s where I’ll intervene, to make sure that the dog gets an escape route, so I relieve that pressure on the dog. That’s not safe for the dog, and it’s not safe for the client, and if something happens, it has ramifications for all of us using AAT and AAPT. If we miss the signals and there’s an incident, a client could be traumatized or injured. All it takes is one or two bad news stories that involve animals in therapeutic practice to impact those of us that are working hard to do this in a responsible manner. I would hate for that to happen. That’s why I’m a big proponent for all counselors who are involving animals in their work to learn the body language of those animals really well.

So there is really a lot you have to look at for everybody’s safety and benefit. Those are excellent examples of behaviors we’ve all seen in our pets, but didn’t realize they were such important signals. How would you work with a child, or teach a child to approach a dog or a horse safely, in a way that the animal would be most comfortable?

Well, I teach all my clients how to approach dogs safely. I do this even though my primary play therapy dog, Kirrie, is very people oriented, and she’s very happy to be approached by anybody. I want clients to have this skill for other dogs in their lives. First, I teach them how to allow the animal to approach them, rather than them approaching the animal. That way they can determine, “Is this animal interested in me?” There’s a program that you can read about on the website, http://www.doggonesafe.com, called “Be a Tree,” which is a metaphor we use, where we teach kids to stand with their feet apart (their “trunk”), and their arms held out to the side become the branches. Next, the arms are brought in toward their belly and they look down at their hands. We make a game out of it. That makes them look like a tree trunk standing there. So if they were out in a park and a loose dog comes around and they don’t know if the dog is okay or not, if they “be a tree” they are much less interesting to the dog. It’s very easy to learn. It gives them a new skill they can use in the world, and it’s a way of keeping safe. We also teach kids how to pet dogs, not by wrapping their arms around their necks, but by first asking permission of the owner and the dog. Then we instruct them to scratch the dog under the chin or on the chest, which is much more pleasurable than a pat on the head. They learn how to stand at an angle so the dog realizes, “Okay, this person isn’t aggressive” (what head-on approaches mean to dogs). First, I have clients practice this using stuffed, life-sized toy dogs. Then I get a paper towel, rub it on their arms so it has the child’s scent on it, and take it for the dog to sniff, so the dog has some information about the child before I introduce them. Even though most therapy dogs are really well socialized, and they know how to do polite greetings with clients, it takes very little time to teach our clients how to be safe around dogs.

Thank you. I just wanted to comment that I love the “Be-a-Tree,” and the idea of using the paper towel so that the dog has the client’s scent is excellent.

Yes, and that’s a good example of reciprocity, considering the animal’s point of view, and it’s giving them information. We have information about our clients before we meet with them, and so I want the animals I’m working with to have that too.

So that paper towel becomes their “intake?”

Yes. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but that’s exactly right.

I know you use positive reinforcement in your training, while others advocate for a more aversive approach. Can you tell us why that’s so important to you to use positive reinforcement?

Yes. We’re focusing on our relationship with our animals that we are involving in this process of play therapy. They therapist–animal relationship is a metaphor for everything; it’s a model for relationships, it’s a model for healthy attachment. The type of relationship we create is very important, and we’re going to show that in our interactions with our animal therapy partners, which our clients are going to observe. You can train a dog or help a dog get past any behavior problem using positive methods. The whole idea of dominance theory is based on some faulty studies of wolves in captivity. The scientists who originally presented dominance theory, and the idea that you have to be the pack leader, have rescinded that. We now know that dogs organize themselves much like human families, and the same is true of wolves in the wild. They rarely use force among themselves. They need to have clear communication from us, but we never have to use force because force will hurt that relationship. Some of the more dominance-oriented or coercive types of dog training use choke chains, prong collars, or e-stim, and they have much greater chance of fallout. Some veterinarians have even been studying negative physical consequences such as damage to the trachea. My basic philosophy in training is this: If I wouldn’t do it with a child, I won’t do it with a dog. I wouldn’t shock or drag a child around to get him or her to behave; I’m not going to do that with a dog. I train counselors how to train their dogs in a way that’s very relationship oriented, using positive reinforcement methods.

Excellent. You mentioned earlier that you can involve animals as partners in nondirective play therapy, and I’m wondering if you could also use them in directive play therapy, and what that might look like…what the difference might be in how you involve the animal.

Yes. In nondirective or child-centered play therapy, children make the primary decisions about what to play with and how to play. We provide an overall structure but for the most part, they are making those choices. It’s based on Virginia Axline’s initial work in child-centered play therapy. It’s basically a Rogerian, humanistic form of play therapy based on the principle that if you create a safe and accepting environment and allow kids to make their own choices they will play in a way that moves them in the direction of health and healing. In Animal-Assisted nondirective play therapy, it’s often the child who is deciding whether to include the dog, and what they want the dog to do. You need a dog who’s willing to sit on the sidelines if the child chooses that. You also need a dog with some versatility and who is capable of learning many different things. A dog should not mind being touched and stroked if the children decide they want to sit and pet the dog. You want a dog who can follow the child’s lead with your help. In directive play therapy, we have specific goals, we want the child to learn specific things, so we will set up the situations a bit more. We can have the child learn to train the dog, or do a number of games and activities that we set up. So we need animals with somewhat different personalities for directive play therapy than we do for the nondirective—not always, but often to some extent.

That is quite interesting. I have a question about nondirective AAPT. In nondirective play therapy, the therapist mirrors back what the child is doing, saying, and likely feeling. Do you use the dog as a co-therapist to reflect some of that?

Yes, we do. Of course, it’s really you reflecting since dogs can’t talk (although some dogs are really good at doing that with their bodies). I can speak through the dog some of the time. So if the child is pretending to kill off a dragon in the corner, I might say, “Oh Kirrie, he’s killing the dragon; he’s really going to get rid of that dangerous dragon.” You’re reflecting the child’s feelings and what they’re doing or what the intention of their play is. You might do it through the dog, but not all the time; you need to give some reflections just from you. So I might say to the child, “Oh, you’re mad at that dragon, he hurt those people and you’re going to go take care of that dragon.” Then I might add, “Kirrie, do you see he’s got his big sword and he’s going to get that dragon?” So it’s almost in the third person; but it’s all to accept and reflect what the child is doing and the primary feelings and intentions that are in the play.

Can you share the reactions of a couple children to AAPT?

Yes. I frequently notice that they stand up taller, and they say things like, “I’m really good at working with dogs.” Little statements that show me they are building their own feelings of confidence. I often see kids talk a lot more. I see them becoming more social; they come out of themselves. I see lots of examples of empathy, and often it happens spontaneously, where they look at the dog and say something along the lines of, “Oh, does she have blood on her lip?” Or, “Is she walking with a limp?” Sometimes, they’re projecting their own circumstances onto the dog, but a lot of times they really are paying attention to the dog’s needs. The empathy is there, we just need to capture it. That is huge in this work and I see it happening all the time. Kids are also surprised with how the animal responds to them. But the most prominent things I see are spontaneous expressions of empathy. A lot of kids I work with have huge trauma and attachment problems, so those signs of empathy indicate this is having a real impact.

Excellent. Bruce Perry has an affinity for Animal-Assisted Therapy, especially with kids who have attachment or trauma issues. I’m hoping many more people will get on board, because it’s such an exciting approach.

Yes. It’s very exciting and I want more people and organizations to be open to this type of work. Before we start to see more research about AAPT need to have really well-trained animals and counselors, family therapists, and play therapists who can do this work well to facilitate research in this area.

I agree, and can you talk a little bit about your study—the study that you did on play therapists’ use of Animal-Assisted Therapy?

Yes. I did a survey of play therapists and found that there were a lot of people involving animals in their play therapy work, but not all had received training. I was concerned about that situation. In another evaluation study, we used sand trays as a closing activity with children when they ended play therapy. I asked some of the people who have been through my AAPT training programs to ask child clients to do a sand tray, whether they’ve worked with a dog or not, and pick items that represent what it was like to come to play therapy. This is a very simple study and it doesn’t tell us a whole lot, but what I looked for was whether or not the children selected animals to be part of their sand tray. What I found was that almost every child who had been involved in AAPT did select an animal figure or two to include in their sand tray, while a much lower percentage of children who had been involved in play therapy without animals selected an animal. It was like asking the child’s opinion about their therapy experience and what they liked about it, and the AAPT children did select animals for the sandtray much more frequently.

That is fascinating research, and very telling. Earlier you mentioned self-efficacy. Could you go over some of the other goals of AAPT?

Yes. The goals that involve animals are the same full range of goals that we have when we’re developing treatment plans for children. There are five general goal areas where animals are particularly useful. One is self-efficacy, which refers to building up children’s ability to do things for themselves, to take care of themselves, to keep themselves safe, and to develop competencies—actual skills, such as planning ahead—having confidence, etc. The next area that is extremely valuable is in developing healthy attachment and a relationship. Children who have attachment problems who seem not particularly empathic or caring may not have ever had the experience of being cared for. I think it’s hard for us as therapists, parents, or foster parents to expect these kids to have empathy and care for someone else if they have never experienced it themselves. In this type of therapy, they feel cared for by the animals, so when we play hide-and-seek and the animal comes to find them that gives that experience of being cared for, and is part of the attachment/relationship equation. Or the animal may come up and lick them and the child thinks, “Oh, this animal likes me.” Part of what we can do as therapists is help shape a healthy attachment relationship for the child and the animal. We are going to help them behave toward the animal in a way that is evocative of a healthy attachment. The third goal area is empathy. I’m talking about looking at the world through the animal’s eyes, which we as therapists need to be doing, and we want to help the clients do the same. Session questions that promote empathy might include, “How do you think the dog is feeling about this right now?” Or, “I just noticed that Sailor the Horse walked away from you when you were shouting like that, what do you think is going on with him?” In this way, we can teach and prompt them to pay more attention to the animal’s body language. So looking out for the welfare of the animal is an important part of developing empathy. A fourth area is self-regulation. Our clients need to have patience with the animals, to communicate with them, to plan ahead; and if they’re not regulated then the animals can become dysregulated too. The final area is a catch-all for more specific problem resolution. We can deal with child’s anxieties or phobias, or with trauma, with anger, with aggression, with oppositionality through the AAPT activities we choose. I’ve worked with quite a few kids who have histories of animal maltreatment. I am very convinced that one of the best things we can do is to first help them develop a relationship with the therapy animal, and then extend it to the home if there are animals in the home. Once they have a relationship, they’re not objectifying the animal (or person) they’re maltreating. They start to see the animal as another living being.

There are many benefits for children who have the opportunity to do this type of therapy.

There really are. It is very exciting, and we can get the same benefits for our adult clients. AAPT in the counseling field is growing. Dr. Cynthia Chandler’s books and her program within ACA has been a wonderful addition to what we know about Animal-Assisted Therapy. Aubrey Fine has been a real leader in developing Animal-Assisted Therapy in psychological practice. My work extends it by adding in the play therapy and the family play therapy pieces, so that AAPT is more systemic. There’s a vast amount to learn. People need to realize it is much more than just taking a nice animal to work with you.

That’s right. So sometimes you use animals when you work with families?

Yes. There are several ways that I involve families, which I always do in some way. One way has been to work with a child alone for a few sessions, where we might train the dog and play relationship games. Then I invite the parents in and the child does a demonstration for them. The child becomes the “animal expert,” and does a demonstration for the parents. The parents are often surprised at how good the kids are with the animals. You can just see the children beaming, which is evidence of self-efficacy. There is acknowledgment from the parents, and the realization that, “No, this isn’t just a bad kid, this is a child who really wants to do good things—and is capable of doing good things.” Sometimes I might give the whole family a task. First, they all learn some preliminary material about training dogs, or I have the child teach them something. Then I might give the family a task such as “OK, here’s a new toy Kirrie has never seen before, and I want you as a family to come up with a game you can play and use it with Kirrie.” The family has to work together to figure out the game. While they are working together we observe the family dynamics and how well they problem solve together; how they communicate both as a family and with the animal and then discuss their experiences afterward. We can do many of these same things with families and horses.

Those are great ways to involve families, both as an audience to the child’s accomplishments and as active participants in AAPT. I’d like to ask about safety considerations when using AAPT?

That is a really important question. First, there are going to be some children and adult clients who are afraid of dogs or horses. Then it becomes a question of “Is it pertinent to their goals that they overcome that fear?” because you certainly can use AAPT to help them overcome that. Second, for safety reasons, you must always be mindful of the health and well-being of the animal. A stressed or ailing dog could become more stressed in a therapeutic setting. So animals who are not well don’t belong in therapy. What really drives the decision is first, what are the client’s goals, and second, does it make sense for the animal to be part of it. We want the client to have a say in that too. Third, is the animal appropriate or not? That is another important safety consideration because involving an animal who is not appropriate for this kind of work is a huge risk factor. We must obtain parental approval when we’re working with children. We also need additional liability coverage, both professional and business liability in case there’s an injury or a bite. Hopefully, we are astute enough to prevent that, but this is not risk free work.

That speaks to how you must read the dog’s body language and use care when selecting a therapy animal.

That is absolutely the case. First, it’s the selection, then you never stop watching the animal “in the moment;” you always have to split your attention between the animal and your clients, including whole families, and that adds a lot of different spices to the mix.

What happens if you have to step out of the therapy room in the middle of an AAPT session? Do you ever leave a child alone in the room with a pet?

I would never, ever do that. I rarely say the word “never” but I think that’s such an important question. I would never, ever leave a child alone even with a well-trained therapy animal.

Probably the same for adults too?

Yes. You might have the nicest client in the world, and you’ve got the nicest animal in the world, but things can go wrong because accidents happen. Horses step on people, and our clients are not necessarily going to be adept at reading horse or dog body language, or know how to behave safely around the animal. So, if I have to use the bathroom, I take the dog to the bathroom with me. Or I’ll leave the dog in the room if the child needs to leave. I’m not going to leave the two alone together. It is our responsibility to make sure that everybody stays safe. I don’t make a big deal about it because I don’t want to increase clients’ anxiety—but I handle it that way.

That is such important information. Switching topics a bit, can you briefly describe your training program? I know it has an excellent reputation and involves a lot of hands-on training. Are there other training programs out there that people might want to look into to find the best fit for them?

Yes, there are a lot of good mental health AAT programs that are cropping up. In my own program, I teach people specifically about AAPT, and I’ve just launched a certification program. People come to the AAPT Level 1 training without bringing their own animals to learn all the basics with the dogs and horses we have available. Prior to the live training, they must complete two online courses: Introduction to Animal-Assisted Play Therapy, and Canine Communication. Participants learn quite a bit about dog body language, and they practice what they’ve learned in the two online components. We do lots of hands-on activities in the live trainings, and there are also lectures and video demonstrations. After Level 1, people do further work with their animals at home. They come back later for AAPT Level 2, where they bring their own dogs, and we do additional activities with horses. We spend a lot of time on relationship-building games and activities that are fun for both trainees and their dogs. The whole idea is to help people involved in AAPT to become competent and confident in what they’re doing.

Well your program sounds excellent. Is your program the only one that specifically incorporates play therapy, where the animal functions as therapy partners?

I’m not sure, but we do have a thorough program in AAPT. There are other people practicing Animal-Assisted Therapy or incorporating playful Animal-Assisted activities who naturally realize that keeping it fun and playful is a good thing. But to do it in a systematic way, using systematic nondirective, cognitive behavioral, or family types of play therapy…as far as I know our training program and certification is unique. There are a number of other play therapists who have worked in this area. My coleader is a play therapist from the UK who has done this work with horses—Tracie Faa-Thompson. Kay Trotter is a play therapist and counselor who has done a lot of work melding the fields, especially in her research and writing about equines in therapy. And I already mentioned Cindy Chandler, who has an excellent program at the University of North Texas and has set up a List serve through ACA. There are a growing number of human–animal interaction programs for mental health, such as at Denver University, which are excellent. So I’m not the only one, but I think our program is unique in terms of utilizing a systematic way of integrating play therapy and teaching this approach.

This is such an innovative method, and it will be exciting to see how this specialty develops. Thank you for your time and for sharing information about your work. This has been eye opening, and I hope many people will get on board and obtain appropriate training, because I think it is so enriching to integrate animals into play therapy.

Well, it’s been a real pleasure talking with you, Kate, and I hope so too. I hope this will be something that more and more counselors get involved with and do research on as time goes on.