Pet Therapy in Tzfat

Devorah Leah

Devorah Leah Rice wasn't thinking about pet therapy many years ago, when she lived on a farm near Hebron. She was simply happy to do a favor for friends, whose son was having difficulties and needed a change of pace.

"I wasn't thinking about therapy" Devorah Leah said, "just about how to help this child. But I saw that his interaction with animals calmed him, and helped him to acclimate to his surroundings".

This experience happened long before anyone in Israel had heard of pet therapy; the field was still new in America, and Israel was many years away from starting the pet therapy programs which are today taken for granted. But the experience not only affected the child who had been sent to the farm - Devorah Leah also noted how important the presence of animals had been in helping this boy learn about himself while dealing with some of the issues which had been troubling him.

Devorah Leah eventually left the farm and moved to Tzfat, where her shaggy-haired mutt Jamie became a recognized part of the Tzfat landscape. She often volunteered at the Old Age home, bringing Jamie to visit the residents. When Or Chochma, a school for severely learning-disabled children opened, Devorah Leah was asked to bring her animals to visit the children.

Bring Pet Therapy to Tzfat

Today, Devorah Leah's pet therapy is an integral part of the school's therapy program. Together with art therapy, gardening, and bibliotherapy, the pet room is a popular place for children to come for some one-on-one time with Devorah Leah and her animals. Besides Jamie, who comes to visit periodically, there is a cat, Matokie (Sweetie), a hamster, Haim (especially beloved by 8-year-old Haim), fish, and rabbits. A child can choose to hold, feed, or care for an animal, go into the rabbit pen (with the rabbits moving around him), sit on a beanbag, which is Matokie's signal to jump into his lap, or simply watch while the animals are cared for and groomed.

"It's so much easier for a child to open up and talk when they're with the animals" explains Devorah Leah. "It's a much more natural atmosphere, and while sitting and stroking the animals, many children have told me much more than they ever tell anyone else. Some of the professional therapists and educators have told me that some of these children who open up to me didn't even speak to the other adults in the school for years, until the animals arrived."

The school, Or Chochma, cares for and educates some of the most disturbed and learning-challenged children in the North. Children journey to the school on a daily basis, some for up to an hour's journey each way, in order to have the opportunity to learn in this special atmosphere. Many of these children are from dysfunctional families - many are in foster families. The staff loves and cares for them, but Or Chochma is, after all, a school, and the children feel the expectations.

There's one corner in the school, however, where the children know that they will be accepted unconditionally, no matter what grade they received on a test, or no matter how badly they acted up that day. That corner is with the animals, who are always there to snuggle and cuddle. It could be that more learning takes place in the pet therapy room than anywhere else in the school.