We have a very special visitor coming to our refuge at the moment to work with our children. Meet Mysti, a trained therapy dog from local company HumAnima. With her owner Kathryn, Mysti visits every week to carry out animal therapy sessions.

Animal therapy

A photograph of a spaniel-cross dog facing the camera

Animal therapy is a wonderful way of working with children who have been through very difficult circumstances and fled homes where they did not feel safe. Working with a therapy dog:

  • Helps reduce anxiety and stress and builds feelings of comfort
  • Helps build trust: Mysti offers complete acceptance and love; it feels safe to talk to Mysti and they can say anything to her
  • Helps children who might struggle to talk about their feelings: they can talk about Mysti instead!
  • Helps children manage while they are feeling difficult emotions; Mysti provides a distraction so they don’t get distressed or overwhelmed
  • Promotes self-esteem
  • Help children to work together as a group with Mysti in games and activities
  • Mysti is also playful – we can laugh and have much-needed fun!

As an example of an activity: when the children first meet Mysti, Kathryn explains how at first the dog might be shy. She asks the children how they can make Mysti feel comfortable and not scared. From this, the conversation moves on to how children feel when they go into new situations or meet new people: what they need to be safe and how they can manage their feelings.

Our refuge family support worker has seen the benefits of the work on the children:

“It helps the children’s communication with other children and how they listen to each other, we noticed after a few sessions that the children who find it difficult to pay attention were really listening to what Kathryn was saying. It has also helped children’s coping strategies, the calming techniques helped the children understand ways of self-calming and self-soothing; even the youngest children in the group took this on board. Mysti was a good distraction when the children were talking about their problems – it didn’t feel like the focus was on them and they could be open.”

What children say

The children have also been telling us how much they enjoy the sessions:

“Thank you, I had so much fun today. Kathyrn and Mysti have made my day” (child, age 11)

“Thank you Kathryn and Mysti, you have both made me feel more comfortable around dogs and allowed me to socialise in the garden with everyone” (child, age 17)

“I had lots of fun with Mysti, I liked talking to Kathryn about my life” (child, age 7)

This is part of a wider health and wellbeing programme in our refuge which also includes one to one counselling for adults and children, family art therapy, and support groups.

We are grateful to SCVO and Sandwell Council for funding this programme.

Can you help?

If you would like to support us to make work like this happen, you can donate online here  or contact our fundraising team to get involved in our fundraising activities.