Since last September and once a week throughout the year, residents of the L’Oustaù nursing home have benefited from animal mediation sessions with Caroline, a facilitator at the Les Z’aMimaux association.

It followed the call for the project from the Conference of Funders for the Prevention of Loss of Autonomy (CFPPA) from Gard to which Cécile, the facilitator in L’Oustau, responded that this project was born.

It was able to develop thanks to a € 4,000 grant awarded for the year by the Gard departmental council.

So every Monday, a regularly varying group of twelve residents, selected according to their individual cognitive and relational difficulties, encounter Caroline and her more or less familiar pet (bunny, guinea pig, degus or rat).

The animals allow themselves to be fed and petted

The session started with a short presentation in which everyone, via two soft toys in a happy or sad mood, indicated their current state of mind.

Giving a stuffed animal to a neighbor is one of those automatic moves that parents no longer practice and that Caroline carefully uses to help them find it. He then distributed ingredients to them to make food before taking the animals out. Here again, the forgotten moves resurface, and Caroline uses their olfactory and taste memories to guess the nature of the ingredients.

Finally the animals were able to get out of their cages and frolic among the elements of the field set up on the big table for them. Mice, degus, and guinea pigs allowed themselves to be fed and petted, and each participant adopted a certain attitude with them, some even waving their arms, others keeping their distance.

Caroline explains that the animal spontaneously triggers a relationship, through a touch or mutual gaze, a relationship in which judgment does not intervene and language or cognitive deficits are not a hindrance. The animal provides natural attraction, it is a wonderful mediator for stimulating the reactions, which are often dormant, of its inhabitants.

Thus, the session generates a lot of emotions, well-being and most importantly laughter.

Midi Libre Correspondent: [email protected]