It's no secret that animals have a calming effect on human beings. Julie Marchand, occupational therapist, understood this and decided to take advantage of this power. For the past few months, she has been working with a one-of-a-kind assistant:her dog Frisbee! After being adopted at the SPA, the animal was specially trained to accompany the elderly. His mistress even trained as an animal mediation worker to carry out his project.
The occupational therapist, who works at the EHPAD de Craon, takes Frisbee to his workplace once a week. For thirty minutes, he accompanies the elderly during exercises around memory, attention or motor skills. "To work on memory, for example, the resident is asked to caress the left ear three times, the right paw three times, then the back of the neck three times," explains Julie Marchand to HautAnjou. The relationship with the animal is obviously very important in this process. “Some in wheelchairs who no longer moved too much, seeing Frisbee made the effort to reach out. The caregivers couldn't believe it," she says.
The results of this experiment being very encouraging, Julia Marchand decided to go further by working with horses!
