Canine Assisted Learning (CAL) is aimed at building resilience in young people. Working with animals - including dogs - is an effective tool in building healthy brains. The contact with our dogs is calming and fun and can reach young people emotionally very quickly where other programs can't.
Adolescents are more sensitive to physical, psychological, social, emotional and relationship changes around them. This can lead to difficulties with regulating their stress levels in response to certain events and lead to anxiety and/or depression. Adolescence is a time of increased independence, peer importance, a complex social world along with rapid personal development.
Unpredictability can be a key driver of anxiety in all of us, children and teenagers can be especially vulnerable… and 2020 has been anything but predictable adding to the usual levels of uncertainty.
CAL can ease this and help teach young people that everything they need in order to feel safe and calm is already in them.
We do this by:
- Teaching young people about anxiety, why it happens and why we need to be able to control it.
- How anxiety manifests and what it looks like.
- Practicing mindfulness, breathing, connection and empathy.
We achieve this through working with dogs. See why working with dogs is so therapeutic here.
Would you like your school to take part in our CAL program?
The program is ideally taken over the course of 10 weeks, one hour per week but we have the option for a shorter four week course.