Psychiatric patients as RandAgiamoTM volunteers improve the quality of life of shelter’s dogs.

Scientific literature showed dogs could play a role of co-therapist reducing depression, stress disorder symptoms, and anxiety in human patients. In the shelter context, these roles can be reversed since the dogs themselves need of social enrichments and inter-specific contacts. RandAgiamoTM is a project aimed to increase dogs’ adoption rate and welfare by implementing a standardized training and socialization protocol (Menchetti et al., 2015). Volunteers walk dogs that successfully complete this program. Conversely to usual life, where they were always the object of health care or treatments, RandAgiamoTM provided to some psychiatric patients the opportunity to become themselves the providers of care for someone else. Since 2012, the patients, together with their health operators, were assigned to the role of volunteers. They regularly visit the shelter for walking RandAgiamoTM dogs to help them maintaining skills acquired with training. Walking together promoted social relationships among humans and dogs, but also provided an opportunity to be in contact with nature. The project brought overall tangible benefits. Walking dogs contributed to increase relational and technical competencies, social integration and self-esteem in psychiatric patients. On the other hand, their volunteering to the shelter provided a social, recreational and experiential enrichment to the dogs. Patients refereed to be highly satisfied of their experience as volunteers. This is proven by their assiduous participation and from their feeling of proud to be part of RandAgiamoTM. Their collaboration brought a consistent improvement of the quality of life of the shelter dogs of which they took care. Menchetti, L., Mancini, S., Catalani, M. C., Boccini, B., Diverio, S. 2015. RandAgiamo™, a Pilot Project Increasing Adoptability of Shelter Dogs in the Umbria Region (Italy). Animals 5(3), 774-792.