January 25, 2012 3:49 PM
A pet-grooming challenge in episode 3 of Redemption Inc. seemed to soften the rough edges of some participants.
As stressful as the doggie-spa exercise may have been, the opportunity to have a close encounter with the furred kind revealed some participants' lighter sides and reminded Garry Glowacki of successful pet-facilitated prison therapy programs.
Glowacki, who heads the Toronto-based prisoner reintegration program The Bridge, explained that the pets in prison treatment works because "you have a warm, live being, it's letting you rub it and it's not judging you and it's giving you unconditional love."
The healing power of pets, in particular dogs, has long been recognized in the medical community. Stroking and talking with animals has been clinically proven to lower patients' blood pressure and stress levels, and the Canadian Physiotherapy Association operates an Animal Rehab Division.
"When they first showed that scene in the show where everyone had a dog and they were all petting them, I liked that," Glowacki said. "Dogs can sometimes be a really important part of people's healing."
Justin Piché, a member of the Policy Review Committee for the Canadian Criminal Justice Association, noted that the experience even seemed to win over Alia, who confessed she had an aversion to dogs before the challenge.
"By the end of the show, she was like, 'Yeah they're not so bad,'" Piché said. "That's just from two days of spending time with them. It was an illustrative example of how animals can change people's perceptions."
Piché added that before their closure in 2010, Canada's prison farms served a similar therapeutic purpose by allowing those serving time to "pick up skills in terms of empathy while taking care of animals, as a way to ease their transition into the community."
