Our Therapy Dogs

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The training for 4 therapy dogs and their trainers is underway.  They are:

 

   Sara and Noah                Julie and Marley            Carol and Rogue           Carole and Sally

Sarah  Julie  Carol  Carole

 

There is one more partnership hoping to join them soon and Mark (training team) and his dog Jessie join us for the training and the ensuing lunch where the dogs all have to settle down while we eat.

 

Look at our Therapy dogs with their lovely new coats embroidery to make them even smarter will be coming soon.  From left to right we have Sara with Noah, Julie with Marley, Carol with Bully and Carole with Sally and Ace.

 

A training session with wheelchairs because this is something the dogs need to get used to.

 

The training is demanding and they are all doing well to date – despite one of our training grounds being the home to many beautiful feral cats!  This will come in useful because there will be a strict assessment before they will pass as fully trained Therapy Dogs and even then what they have learned will be kept up to date by more training.

 

There will be several aspects covered By Tales to Tails Therapy Dogs, Cy. The first is for  children with learning, reading  or confidence difficulties.  They will be able to  increase their skills and confidence by reading to a nice calm, trained dog.  The dog will be fully supervised.

 

This was our first session with our lovely helpers, Ellie, Joseph, Libby and Katie.  Didn’t they all do well!

 

In the pipeline:    The rest of the Therapy program is mixed and in the negotiation and plannin stages.  We are talking to the carers at a home for disabled people and hope to be able to take our dogs there to make life a little better for the residents.  We are also interested in taking our dogs into homes for the elderly to demonstrate tricks and dance etc. or just for people to see and touch.

We are talking to schools and colleges to see how we can work together in many areas of education through and about animal care, training and behaviour:   especially  how we can work together to promote dogs in a better light and help people at the same time.

One of the schools is keen to see if we can form a dog training club for the children.  They would learn how to care for and train their own dogs.  More about this later I hope.

There are other thoughts in our minds but first we need to get these off the ground and running successfully.

The Be a tree program, although an independent program, will come under the Therapy Dogs  umbrella for convenience and continuity.

 

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To date we have presented the Be a Tree program to the infant and junior classes of three schools in the Limassol and Nicosia areas.   In total over 400 children have learned how to stay safe around dogs in the last couple of months before the holiday.  Now back to school it is planned that  over the next few months there will be another 400, or more,  children benefiting from this program.

In the Pipeline:    Two of these schools have asked us back and the third is a possibility.  We have designed a follow-on presentation more suitable for older children   – 12 to 16 years old,  because they are likely to have younger brothers and sisters etc and could be instrumental in keeping them safe around dogs.  These children are the next generation of animal owners.

There are at least 2 other schools and a college who  are interested and are working on available dates.  A small group of children visited Julia’s and were taken into  a couple of kennels and runs where they could interact with the dogs and puppies and at the same time learn a little about dogs and how to Be a Tree, read their body language and stay safe.

We are lucky to have a Greek speaker in the group (although could do with a couple more) and are in the process of translating the program into Greek and Russian so that we can go into all of the local schools, not just the International Schools,  and spread the word on how to stay safe around dogs.

We are presenting to older children in October and this will be a presentation on care, management  and training of dogs.  It will tie in with the age group who are about to embark on their Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.  We will create facilities at one of our private rescues under the supervision of a qualified trainer and teacher where they can access the experience required for this award.