“The beauty of the horse is that it can be therapeutic in so many different ways,” says Breeanna Bornhorst, executive director of the Northern Virginia Therapeutic Riding Program in Clifton, Va. Horses have also become popular therapists for people with disabilities.

“One of the things that’s always been known is that the animals help a clinician go under the radar of a child’s consciousness, because the child is much more at ease and seems to be much more willing to reveal,” he says. “Oxytocin has some powerful effects for us in the body’s ability to be in a state of readiness to heal, and also to grow new cells, so it predisposes us to an environment in our own bodies where we can be healthier.”Īnimals can also act as therapists themselves or facilitate therapy - even when they’re not dogs or cats.įor example, psychologist Fine, who works with troubled children, uses dogs in his practice - and also a cockatoo and even a bearded dragon named Tweedle. “Oxytocin helps us feel happy and trusting.” Which, Johnson says, may be one of the ways that humans bond with their animals over time.īut Johnson says it may also have longer-term human health benefits. “That is very beneficial for us,” says Johnson. More recently, says Rebecca Johnson, a nurse who heads the Research Center for Human/Animal Interaction at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine, studies have been focusing on the fact that interacting with animals can increase people’s level of the hormone oxytocin. Another early study found that petting one’s own dog could reduce blood pressure. One of the earliest studies, published in 1980, found that heart attack patients who owned pets lived longer than those who didn’t. “One could even look at Florence Nightingale recognizing that animals provided a level of social support in the institutional care of the mentally ill,” says Fine, who has written several books on the human-animal bond.īut it was only in the late 1970s that researchers started to uncover the scientific underpinnings for that bond.

The use of pets in medical settings actually dates back more than 150 years, says Aubrey Fine, a clinical psychologist and professor at California State Polytechnic University. Dogs like Vi have helped launch an entirely new field of medical research over the past three decades or so. And a staff member,” says Meredith Daly, the inn’s spokeswoman.īut Vi may well be doing more than just bringing smiles to the faces of stressed-out parents and children. “There really isn’t a day when she doesn’t brighten the spirits of a kid at the inn. Families stay at the inn when their children are undergoing experimental therapies at NIH. Thelma Balmaceda, age, 4, pets Viola, the resident canine at the Children’s Inn on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Human Pet Pound by Loki Renard