The Madrid's community in 2015 a pilot program will be developed in the Family Courts in which the objective is to offer the assistance of a trained dog for accompany minors who have to make a judicial statement or an interview. It is a pioneering and innovative initiative that has been imported from the United States, where it has been applied since 2003 with excellent results.
From the Community of Madrid they have indicated that the initiative will be applied in four Family Courts with the challenge of expanding the reach in the medium term. Dogs may assist children in places where interviews with court professionals take place, although it is expected that in a second phase of the program the animals will be able to enter the courtrooms. In the presentation of the program they have been Suri, a Golden retriever Y Congo, a Labrador who simulated the assistance to Celia, a minor who pretended to be interviewed in a judicial proceeding. The two copies accompanied her during an interview in one of the Family courts of Francisco Gervás Street.
Suri Y Congo are only two of the dogs selected from puppies who are raised, socialized and trained throughout their lives to properly perform this work. These are animals included in a training program with daily sessions and accompanied by a professional trainer. The Madrid experience will consist of a free service in which specially trained dogs will accompany these children in order to improve the conditions in which they participate in the interviews. Several scientific studies conducted in the United States have confirmed the benefits of this type of work with animals.
The project will be developed by the company Dogtor Animal which has a multidisciplinary team of professionals with extensive experience in the application of animal therapy. We recently published in Peques and More an interview with Francisco J. Lozano who use dogs in the hospital and who explained to us that the human-animal bond functions as therapy in the recovery process of hospitalized children. It is a good idea to expand this type of therapy to other disciplines and situations and that of a court seems like a good place to do it.
