If any of you have red the ‘About Me’ on the home page, you will know that I was converted to greyhounds by a stray which turned up at our home in Suffolk, UK. From then I was hooked! In those days, greyhounds were on the scrapheap. No dog rescue centre could rehome them. Anne Finch, praise her, was still working on converting the population to what fantastic pets these dogs could make.
Molly (as I called her) became a PAT dog, Pets As Therapy, a UK charity. We used to visit an Old Folks Home and the residents used to so look forward to her visit; patting her, hugging her, saving her titbits from their lunch. It encouraged them to talk about the dogs they had owned and, whilst doing that, stroking Molly was a therapy for these lovely people. And I loved listening to their stories.
Molly particularly loved birthdays – you can imagine how much cake she got to share!
Pro-Galgo runs a similar therapy in Spain. Mo Swatek tells the story.
‘The beautiful rough haired galgo JIM was found one month ago wandering along the highway. He lives with the other therapy dogs in the city dog pound in Tarragona and works several times a week among other things as in the above video in the old people’s home in Valls together with its small doggie friend SAMBA .
The old people love to play with the dogs and stroke them and make co-ordination exercises and come out in such a way by handling the animals from their isolation and their boredom.
We will take over from the project www.tanamigos.es and home the galga GETTY, which was trained also as a therapy dog, however the whole environment with so many people were too stressful and therefore we are looking for a calm family to adopt her. TAN AMIGOS will in the future also help us to train a further galgo as a therapy dog.
Veterinärin ALEXIA told us that they also visit homes for problematic youths and psychologically ill humans with the animals. Also young people come to the kennels and learn with the dogs through clicker training how to communicate with the animals and train them. Only balanced and very open animals are suitable for therapy work.
The very sensitive and shy GETTY finds it stressful and could not get accustomed to too many people in one place , the whole excitement frightened her. In order to save her further stress, she will be rehomed.’
Sadly, so many associations just do not have the time to train dogs to do this work, but it is so essential, such good therapy for both dogs and humans, and also vital in proving to an unbelieving Spanish society that galgos can contribute an important place in their lifestyle – not to be discarded every year like a used cigarette butt!