Thank you for taking an interest in Animal Assisted Interventions and Therapies. In our blog we aim to give you an insight in to the work Canine Assisted Learning carries out along with information and relevant articles on animal assisted interventions, activities and therapies from other professionals, students and pupils.
As this is our first blog post I would like to introduce myself – My name is Vickie and I am the founder of CAL. I grew up in the North Wales countryside and have always had a love for animals; they have been part of my life from as far back as I can remember. Without realising it at the time animal assisted therapy had helped me through many challenges in my childhood. My horse was my best friend for many years, she became somebody I could talk to, somebody that would listen with no judgement, that I felt safe with and allowed me to be myself . I am so thankful that I had my four legged friend to help me through many difficult times and hope I along with the CAL team can do the same for the young people and adults we work with.
I have a background that began working with horses, I soon discovered my job was not only to teach people to ride but to listen to their worries and troubles . There was a calm around the horses that made people relax and feel at ease, that enabled them to talk about what was bothering them and to leave feeling calm and more at ease with themselves. I was intrigued and soon discovered more about the amazing emotional and physical benefits of the human animal bond. Life then steered me in the direction of working with children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. It was from there that I saw how animals could have a huge effect on the children I was working with and so with the help of my late golden Labrador Poppy I had the vision of what CAL could be and set out on a journey to achieve it. Our journey has developed in to many fields, we are consist of a team of experienced professionals working to enhance he emotional wellbeing of all, in schools, colleges universities, workplaces, care-homes and mental health hospitals. I am immensely proud of the work our teams carry out and we aim to help more people every day.
I will be sharing many of our heart warming case studies with you over the forthcoming blog posts along with relevant news, research and media. Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I hope you will continue to follow CAL.