“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.”
Calo Canine Therapy Department utilizes Golden retrievers to help students experientially live and learn the Calo model.
Through daily interactions with the canines, the students get to experience in real time the elements of the CASA model:
commitment
acceptance
security
attunement
Often, students will experience making mistakes with the canines and experience feelings of empathy, love, and acceptance as the canine quickly forgives and provides unconditional love. This allows the student to practice safe and healthy attachment, with the ultimate goal of transferring those relationship skills to safe human relationships (transferable attachment).
Canine Therapy Program at Calo Teens
Students are automatically enrolled in the Canine Therapy Program upon admission to calo. All students interested in fostering and/or adopting a Calo canine will complete sequential requirements leading up to fostering and/or adopting a Calo canine. The following are ways that Canine Therapy helps students at Calo Teens.
All Calo students will have the opportunity to connect with the canines and learn to invest in their physical and emotional needs.
Ultimately, the canine-adolescent relationship allows students to develop an understanding of parental love, something we at Calo refer to as “transferrable attachment.”
The very core lesson that countless conversations and traditional talk therapy never taught a student over the years is finally discovered experientially as a student is vulnerable to a loving, safe animal –