Dogs: The New Teachers of Empathy

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Interacting with dogs helps children create healthy bonds and develop emotional tools to decrease conflict and bullying in the classroom.

Dogs: The New Teachers of Empathy
Dogs are allies against bullying. Photo: Istock/LightFieldStudios
Reading time 3 minutes
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Spain is a pioneer in animal-assisted therapy for the prevention of bullying.

Bullying has been a severe problem in the educational community since standardized education began. Despite its prevalence, it remains a very understudied issue in Latin America. According to the NGO Bullying sin Fronteras (Bullying Without Borders), statistics on the subject are scarce. The stats before those provided by this NGO and the OECD date from 1990.

Mexico has seen its statistics rise to the highest levels of student violence. Bullying Without Borders reports that in the last three years, seven out of ten children suffered bullying. However, recently it rose to eight out of ten, placing Mexico in the first place of bullying in the classroom among the participating OECD countries. In the United States, this statistic is one of every five. Faced with this situation, the educational sector has discovered a possible solution through allies that we would not have imagined before: dogs!

Allies to prevent bullying

In 2017, the Affínity Foundation, in conjunction with the Lleó XIII School in Barcelona, launched the “Respect Me” pilot program, which consists of animal-assisted education to combat bullying. The initiative works as one more subject in the school schedule. In this space, assisted therapies with dogs are managed, having as their primary objectives to promote respect, prevent bullying, and strengthen inclusion among students.

Maribel Villa, a technician at the foundation, referred to the benefits of the program in a 2018 press conference: “It increases self-esteem; students learn to tolerate frustration, redirect inappropriate behaviors, and work in a team: things that seem very simple but require effort.” She added that countless goals can be worked on to improve students’ emotional intelligence in an elective course like this.

During the same event, Isabel Buil, Director of the Affinity Foundation, explained why dogs are so effective in the teaching-learning process as tools to strengthen students’ emotional health and prevent bullying, among other benefits. Buil sustains that dogs provide a safe way for children and young people to practice listening and express empathy without feeling judged. Thanks to this dynamic, children and adolescents can form healthy bonds with therapy animals and repeat the positive patterns in their relationships with students and people outside the classroom.

What’s behind the dog work

Other harassment prevention organizations use therapy dogs in Spain, such as the Asturian association Entrecanes, which performs dog-assisted interventions in schools, universities, and companies. In education, they offer various intervention plans to teach or reinforce the social skills necessary to prevent or reduce school bullying.

“The objective is to improve coexistence in the classroom, group cohesion, and work on emotions, conflict resolution, or empathy,” Oscar Bueno, spokesman for Entrecanes, explained to El País. He reiterated that the intervention workshops are aimed at either preventing harassment or reducing it where it has already been reported, adding that it is essential to understand the difference when setting goals. He stressed that workshops and programs of this nature are not just supported by dogs but also by professionals in psychology and the teaching and theoretical content that contextualize what students need to learn to forge positive bonds.

A second chance for the canines

 The focus of dog-assisted therapy is to help people with specific learning, behavioral, and emotional management issues. However, an unexpected benefit is an opportunity for the dogs performing these tasks to enjoy a happy, longer lifespan, especially in Latin America, where the problem of pet abandonment is very rampant. In Mexico, 70% of dogs live in the street, placing the country in first place for canine abandonment in Latin America. During the pandemic, the abandonment of pets increased 20%, according to the Attorney General’s Office of Environmental and Territorial Planning. The agency maintains that only 10% of the animals in the shelters are adopted.

Mexico and the rest of Latin America are beginning to see the advantages of rescuing dogs to integrate them into therapy-and-accompaniment programs for various purposes, including supporting autistic children, grief therapy, and assisted education. Although there are no other organizations on the continent with 30 years of experience in personalized programs such as Affinity, what can be found are new ideas and enthusiasm to learn how to potentiate this methodology of educational and psychological support.

In Mexico, the Association of Canine Therapies, Mexico, AC was formed, and the community Therapy Dogs in Mexico. Colombia has also joined the trend with organizations like LATIMOS, which offers education for dogs and intervention workshops using dogs trained to provide therapy.

Have you heard of animal-assisted therapy in the classroom? Have you been to any such sessions? What were your experiences? Do you know any other type of therapy with animals other than dogs? Let us know in the comments.


Translation by Daniel Wetta

Sofía García-Bullé

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0