Angels in the guise of animals

The Animal Angels Foundation (AAF) based at Marol, is an enthusiastic team comprising clinical psychologists and dog trainers. Being animal lovers, the team always wanted to incorporate animals in their line of work.

Animals do not discriminate against caste, colour, creed, deformities or failures, and somehow their sixth sense always reaches out to a soul in need. We speak to Radhika Nair and Rohini Fernandes to understand how it all works.

The idea of using animals to help people came to us during the fieldwork in our M.A. course, when we had to work in the psychiatric wards of various hospitals. We often had to work with clients, who loved animals and the moment we would talk about the animals, they would relax.

We then did a year's course from the University of North Texas, USA and Delta Society, USA, after finishing our Masters in Clinical Psychology and became certified practitioners of animal-assisted therapy. In November 2004, Rohini Fernandes got a golden retriever puppy, named her 'Angel' and trained her as a therapy dog. She is the first therapy dog of Animal Angels Foundation, which has been named after her. We started AAF in January 2005.
Every morning, our canine therapists are picked up from their homes by our human therapists. Each therapy dog works in a school/institute, in individual and group sessions for not more than two hours in a day. Work for them is getting brushed, petted, fed biscuits, being taken for a walk, playing ball and of course, getting loads of hugs and kisses.

We have a volunteer programme for people, who have friendly pets and want them to get registered with us. The pets have to pass a temperament test and then they can volunteer along with their owners at orphanages and old age homes. We teach our volunteers (both human and canine) about what they need to do on the job before they start.

Are certain breeds more conducive to animal-assisted therapy?

We have a lot of Labradors in our team but more than the breed, the temperament of the dog is important. The dog should be friendly, outgoing and enjoy the company of children and adults.

The organisations where we practice animal-assisted therapy are NGOs that work with people from the lower socio-economic sections of the society. They work very hard to reconstruct the lives of individuals with mental, emotional and/or cognitive disabilities. Animal-assisted therapy has helped enhance this process and we have seen remarkable progress in clients. There have been many touching stories where clients, who have not responded to speech or physiotherapy, have responded positively to our therapy dogs because they get so attached to and motivated by our pets.

Not getting adequate funds has limited our ability to reach out to more people. We require financial assistance to help us extend animal-assisted therapy services, buy therapy material for our animals and clients, transport our animals and conduct research and documentation of our work.

We started AAF as soon as we completed our post-graduation; without any capital. When we approached people to help us with funds, they did not want to put their money into a concept that they had not heard of. We are lucky to have the support of our parents, who help with the basic finances of the foundation. We also use part of our salary to run the organisation. We work for NGOs that cannot afford to pay us high fees for our services. Many a times we can't take on new projects because of lack of funds and that makes us feel bad.