15/06/2017
Welcome to Heart to Heart... I am an Animal Behavior Specialist by trade. When we arrived in New Zealand from Melbourne in 2008, we were accompanied by our 12 dogs. Most of these are special needs dogs who came to live with us whilst I ran a rescue and re-homing service for dogs back in Australia.
My work has mostly been dog related until 3 years ago when my two beautiful donkey boys came into my life: Asher (Oscar) and Dynamite (Marmite)….and a new love affair began. I had waited 2 years to be able to find two donkeys who needed a new forever home and I am so delighted they came to us. My work as a behaviour specialist has taught me that animals have an amazing empathy with disabled children, and so it was always a passion and plan of mine to add my donkeys into the Animal Assisted Therapy I already do with dogs.
I shared my vision with a friend who has a centre for sensory therapy for the disabled. My special interest is Autism, and so we started to bring some of my friend’s clients out to our property to interact with the donkeys. The first day the two autistic girls came out we cried when we introduced our donkey boys to the girls, and witnessed the immediate empathy between them. The donkeys weighed up the wheelchairs, and once they had worked them out they were very keen to meet and interact with the girls. The girls began coming regularly, as my friend said that they really benefited from the time spent here with the donkeys. The smiles on their faces bear testimony to that, and they are calmer and much more responsive to their other therapy.
We decided to develop a programme and offer autistic and disabled children the opportunity to participate. We have focused on developing relationships between the donkeys and including some sensory elements that help the children to communicate as many of the children are non-verbal. The number of children coming has been increasing with each session. We have found that autistic children and animals respond similarly to stimuli, and this evidence has helped us in developing this programme.
The donkeys are involved a in a variety of activities, from being stroked and groomed, general interaction, giving rides to the children both individual and in our donkey cart, depending on their degree of disability. We are currently fundraising for a float that will enable us to take the donkeys trained in the programme to disabled centres where the children can’t come to us.
The programme is called Heart to Heart...Donkey Assisted Therapy. We feel that it is important to offer the programme free to the children, so we are in the process of registering Heart to Heart as a charity. We are extending the programme to include children suffering with anxiety related disorders, as we have found that children with these problems benefit greatly from time spent with the donkeys, and donkeys won’t betray a secret told to them in confidence by a troubled child.
Should anyone feel they would like to know more about the programme or support the work we do then feel free to email me at heartoheartdonkeytherapy@gmail.com
We would be delighted to give you further information on what sort of support we need.
