Little Akhil and ‘Doctor’ Ruffles stride down a corridor together, counting the number of steps it takes to reach the end of it. “Fifteen,” says Akhil, his impish little face aglow while the good doctor offers a satisfied woof.
“I went to the beach, played on the merry-go-round and visited the temple yesterday,” says Rajesh, a trifle mechanically. ‘Doctor’ Ruffles cocks his ear and offers him an encouraging lick. Rajesh’s face brightens and he adds, “I saw a monkey there — he had such a long tail.”
“I love this doctor. He is my best friend and I tell him everything,” says Joseph, all of five. ‘Doctor’ Ruffles looks pleased and Joseph smiles.
Akhil is dyslexic, Rajesh autistic and Joseph has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). But ‘Doctor’ Ruffles, a canine, offers them a listening ear and warmth. As actor Johnny Depp once said, “The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.”
“Ruffles helps special children, who ordinarily find it difficult to communicate with us, break through the wall of silence,” says Nanditha Krishna, honorary director of the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation, which runs the Saraswathi Kendra Learning Centre for Children.
Ruffles is part of the Dr. Dog programme, launched in 2001 with the help and coordination of the Animal Asia Foundation (AAF), a charity based in Hong Kong, founded by Jill Robinson and provides animal-assisted therapy programmes to children who need it.
“Jill came to Chennai and taught us how to do this properly. You need to select the right sort of dog — it should be a calm, friendly one with basic obedience skills that has been neutered, vaccinated and kept very clean,” says Nanditha. According to her, Labradors and Retrievers make a good Dr. Dog.
“The animal is always accompanied by a dog handler and a therapist. We teach the children how to count, correct language and vocabulary, reward favourable behaviour with pet time and try to get special children to open up and learn life lessons through the animal,” she says.
Lalita Mahesh, whose son S. Raja has ADHD, believes that Dr. Dog has made a huge difference to her son’s behaviour. “He used to be a very hyperactive child but he has quietened down now. He talks about ‘Doctor’ Ruffles all the time — in fact he is loath to miss school now because he believes that ‘Doctor’ Ruffles will miss him.”
But it isn’t just children who benefit from animal-assisted therapy. Adults do too. Dr. Suniti Solomon, the founder-director of the Y.R. Gaitonde Center for AIDS, is a huge advocate of it. “People who are HIV positive are rarely visited by their friends and family. They tend to get depressed very easily and need a lot of counselling and support,” she says. Her own dog, ‘Doctor’ Nala, visits patients and spends time with those who aren’t afraid of dogs, “When they pat ‘Doctor’ Nala, she wags her tail and licks them. It brings a smile to their faces. Unlike human beings, animals don’t discriminate or pass judgement,” she says.
According to Rohini Fernandes, a clinical psychologist and certified practitioner of animal-assisted therapy (AAT) and co-founder of the Animal Angels Foundation — a Mumbai-based organisation which works in the field of animal-assisted therapy, “We work along with our trained therapy dogs to speed up the recovery process and to help a child or an adult learn or improve various skills. This includes social skills, verbal skills, physical skills and cognitive skills. We also use AAT to help clients deal with emotional/behavioural problems. We, as clinical psychologists, practise AAT in conjunction with play therapy, behaviour therapy and cognitive therapy.”
Rohini says that though people first met the concept with trepidation, it now has more takers, “When, it was started in 2005, many people in India were not aware of AAT. We faced a lot of obstacles, the main being that institutes were too apprehensive to allow us to practise AAT with their clients. They told us that if human therapists could not produce much change in these clients then animals would not be able to help them at all. We then offered these institutes a trial period where we would conduct therapy for a month and we would discontinue if they felt that it was not working. After a month of AAT the positive changes were visible not just to the staff but to the parents of the clients also. From then on, more and more people became interested in our work and we now work in around 12 different institutes all across the city.”
“Dogs provide unquestioning love and attention, make people feel needed and provide security and stability in an often hostile world. They are non-threatening and create a sense of superiority in a child with learning problems and disabilities,” says Nanditha. With a smile on her face she quotes writer Ben Williams who once said, “There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face”.
(Names of children have been changed.)
