what dogs know: canine assisted mediation

What is canine assisted mediation? the question may be more easily answered by asking why canine assisted mediation? David A. Paul wrote a fascinating article about Canine Assisted Mediation which highlights the research around the benefits of dogs.

Paul considers the well-documented psychological and physiological impacts of dogs on humans.  These include:

• decreased blood pressure and heart rate
• increased arterial oxygen saturation
• decreased emotional pain
• decreased cortisol levels
• increased oxytocin
• decreased stress, depression, anger and anxiety

For anyone considering mediation, parties are likely to experience, stress, emotional pain, anger and anxiety.  As a mediator, the thought that the presence of a dog may help to reduce these negative impacts on parties is particularly enticing.

Paul suggests the use of therapy dogs who are trained to work with people in pain and who are monitored to ensure that the dogs are not experiencing stress themselves.  Rather than being responsible for the technical aspects of the process, the canine assistant would be present in the mediation to help parties to self-regulate and to improve the atmosphere in the mediation.  

The presence of the canine assistant would allow parties the opportunity to increase their ability to regulate and self-soothe. In mediation, parties are sometimes so focused on their emotional reaction to the other party that they are unable to negotiate effectively. They may continue to argue about the past / blame rather than trying to problem solve the future. If dogs can help to calm parties this would be a significant benefit to the overall negotiation process.

He does caution that mediators and dogs need to be specially trained to participate in canine assisted mediation. Without doubt bringing any living creature into a conflict situation needs to be done sensitively and ethically.  As a dog lover, I can see the promise of canine assisted mediation.  Dogs have many lessons to teach us about negotiation and conflict.

Next week what can dogs teach us about negotiation?

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