AAHE 301 - The Animal Partner in Animal-Assisted Health and Education

(3 credits)

This course is designed to provide the groundwork for the selection, preparation and protection of an animal integrated into an animal-assisted health and education (AAHE) setting. Coursework will familiarize participants with the competencies and limitations of various species inside and outside the interactive setting (canines, felines, equines, rodents, non-rodent small mammals, reptiles, avian and marine animal), and expand on the assessment of animal competencies for AAHE (including stress assessment, prevention or reduction), and animal behavior, cognition and communication. Specific topics will be dedicated to theoretical and practical concepts of “applied behavioral analysis and modification”, as they are applied towards humane training methodologies that can be used to prepare an animal for AAHE. These include habitation, de-sensitization, classical and instrumental conditioning, observational learning and stimulus control. An active, hands-on component residency experience will familiarize students with animal representatives of various species and provide them with opportunities to apply learned principles in a supervised environment.

This course includes a 3-day residency experience, but the request to substitute the residency experience with remote coursework will be considered. In such cases, to support the practice and demonstration of skills and competencies, synchronous interactive sessions will provide supervision, communication and collaboration, while asynchronous assessments ( ”live” recordings of human-animal interactions), will target challenges, difficulties, accomplishments, and achievements. Prerequisite(s):PSYC 101 Introduction to Psychology and AAHE 201 Introduction to Animal Assisted-Health & Education or PSYC 420 Canine Learning and Behavior . (Fall module I)