Whenever during his therapy sessions with severely withdrawn children, the popular term pet therapy, was coined in 1964 after a child psychiatrist, Boris Levinson, observed a facilitatory effect caused by the presence of his dog.
This is considered the best examples of the therapeutic use of animals reported in the literature.
Indeed, through his dog Levinson did actually establish a relationship with the child and start an effective therapy. Actually the term pet therapy is now being substituted by a more appropriate terminology which allows distinguishing among different kinds of interactions types, globally defined as AAI. Scientists and health professionals have attempted to follow Levinson’s model, since after that,. With that said, studies focused on the ‘child dog’ relationship are grounded on quite a few concepts including. Consequently, at the other end of human’s life is childhood. For the most part there’s a widespread belief that interaction with an animal is beneficial for the development of children and a couple of studies have investigated the influence of companion animals on ‘socialemotional’ and cognitive development.
On top of social status within the peer group, loads of parents report that pets can be valuable tools with which to educate their children about life events and psychological testing has revealed that growing up with pets has a beneficial effect on children’s self esteem and ‘selfconfidence’, can enhance empathy and feeling of responsibility. Then the influence of pets on children development is a relatively new area for scientific research.