Today’s featured study comes from Mayo Clinic Proceedings, and highlights the importance of dogs in stroke rehabilitation. Many stroke recovery patients suffer from limited motivation, reduced energy, lack of companionship and decreased interest in therapy activities but having a canine friend around may help.
Brent Bauer, M.D. (an internist at Mayo Clinic) and his team randomly divided 50 hospitalized patients who recently suffered stroke into a control and experimental group. Fourteen therapy dogs and their handlers participated in this study. The dogs were registered to the Alliance of Therapy Dogs or Pet Partners. Patients in the control group received the standard stroke rehabilitation which included occupational, physical, and speech therapy. Patients in the experimental group had the standard stroke rehabilitation augmented with animal assisted therapy from dogs. If the patients were doing physical therapy, for example, they would walk with a therapy dog and brush the dog’s coat as part of their rehabilitation activity. The results showed that the patients in the experimental group scored higher on the Pittsburgh Rehabilitation Participation Scale (a clinical tool to measure a patient’s effort and motivation during physical or occupational therapy sessions). They also achieved higher levels of physical activity and remained mobile longer. Incorporating animal assisted therapy greatly improved stroke rehabilitation in these patients and might also improve rehabilitation of other stroke patients as well. This work supports the need for further investigation.