Kynotheraphy as the innovative form of supporting disabled children

Kynotherapy is one of the innovatory methods of disabled children therapy ‘a dogassisted therapy” generally speaking is a method helping and strengthening rehabilitations with a dog’s participation which is properly selected, trained and led by a qualified therapist. In 1964,a child psychiatrist Boris Levinson noticed while observing autistic boys in contact with dogs that these animals had caused that autistic children having a communication problem in building up social contacts, established a contact with a dog without any trouble, and it gave a chance for a contact with a therapist in the future. For a working ‘therapy dog’ are selected and trained the representatives of breeds with mellow and good-tempered temperament, well-balanced psyche, patient, obedient and devoted to man. According to therapists an ideal dog in terms of character is one called a social dog, that is such a dog which except mentioned above features will be obedient not only towards people whom it knows well, but also towards every person it meets. A dog selected for work with disabled people has to be a completely foreseeable dog, that is the one which has encoded invariable features of character by his genes. Moreover, it is important that the therapy dog would not have aggressive, apprehensive, or ill ancestors in his pedigree. The main effect of this kind of a contact therapy consists in the physical contact (stroking, cuddling up to a dog, shaking the dog’s paw) and establishing psychical ties with the animal what has a positive influence over the course of the treatment. Despite many inconveniences kynotherapy gains more and more followers in rehabilitation of disabled people. The changes that have occurred for last several years in this innovatory therapy allow to suppose that kynotherapy will be developing incessantly, and ‘dog therapists’ will be able to reach to more and more large number of people in need.