The influence of pets on people with learning, functional and adjustment deficiencies, as well as people with personality and mental disorders is well known and eventually used for treatment.

The fact that connecting to an animal may contribute significantly to a person’s physical and mental health has been known for ages. Scientific studies on deliberate use of pets to improve behavior of children with behavioral disorders began in the 1960’s. Following the studies of psychiatrist Boris Levinson, it enjoyed substantial momentum within mental therapy. Levinson demonstrated that pets, including dogs, may provide enormous assistance in treating children with behavioral disorders. The children were able to create spontaneous connection with the dogs, later transferring this connection to family and the environment.

Children with special needs used the dog as a means of transferring and influence (transmitter) over their communications system.

Patients that cared for pets developed a sense of responsibility, self respect, independence, acceptance of their everyday life, and more importantly, trust and self confidence. All these brought change in their life turning them from irresponsible, dependent people into persons with independence, self respect and responsibility.

Feldman claims “the major role of a pet in its owner’s life is therapeutic by nature”. Pets help millions of people cope with life’s hardships in modern society. They are “unique care givers”: selfless, give a lot and ask for little in return, loving and forgiving without strings attached, provide strength and sympathy, alleviate their owners’ sense of weakness and lack of adjustment. They serve as a source of pleasure and encouragement, decreasing pressures of modern society that sometimes treats adults with special needs as rejects, outsiders and burdens.

The relationship between the dog and the adult with special needs does not remain within the closed cycle but helps the individual develop social connections with other adults with special needs. In institutions for people with special needs, closeness with dogs was found to be higher than in the “normal” population.

We believe pets in general and dogs in particular provide many opportunities to create contacts. Dogs are able so provide some of man’s needs including contact, friendship, love, attention, source of living, real occupation, tension alleviation, decreased frustration, helplessness and loneliness, self esteem, hope, comprehension of the cycle of life, social and family ties, and sometimes provide the connection to the mind of the adult with special needs.

When searching for occupations, we realized the wonderful compatibility that could be integrated in building the canine center at Kishorit for the good of its residents.

In the search for the appropriate dogs we homed in on the Miniature Schnauzer and Miniature Dachshund due to their small size, good physical health, ability to give and receive love and being one-man-dogs who can love an entire family.