Petting Zoo

September 2023

You know what they always say – if you can’t make it to the zoo, then bring the zoo to you. At least, that’s what WE say whenever we plan a petting zoo event at our Day Program. We’ve discussed many times in previous posts that the way to the clients’ hearts is through animals. And it’s not difficult to understand why – we’ve been hosting pet therapy sessions at Universal for well over ten years now. There’s something about a happy, gentle dog that can soothe anyone’s soul, but our petting zoo Fun Fridays go way beyond our canine friends. For this Petting Zoo day, we had goats, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs.

We use a company called Farm Chicks (www.farmchicks123.com), who not only grace us with a truck full of animals but bring a big dose of education with them. The owner, Diana, and her colleague set up a large cage in the courtyard where all the animals could be pet, fed or just observed. Throughout their visit, Diana and her partner also walked around carrying individual animals, answering questions from the curious clients and providing information about each animal. In true Fun Friday fashion, there always needs to be a little extra touch added to the event. So, in the spirit of farms everywhere, we asked the staff and clients to wear flannel for the day, and we also had the Speech Department create a music playlist that included popular country songs and banjo versions of well-known pop songs. Yeehaw!

We should mention that it’s not just fun and games – over the past three years, we’ve been incorporating much more push-in therapy during our Fun Friday events. Very simply, push-in therapy is a form of therapy that “pushes” the traditional therapy session into a Day Program event that is already taking place. A few examples of this are the Cognitive Therapy sessions that were run by Nicole Smith, our Lead Cognitive Therapist. During the petting zoo event in the courtyard, Nicole had her Friday buddy and client, Henry, work on communication skills by telling Diana whether he did or did not want to pet each animal as she brought them around. Later that day, Nicole held a session with another client, George, who worked on targeting his memory and his organization of thoughts by trying to remember each animal that came around. Nicole and George also used the petting zoo event to work on socialization and communicating with his peers, which is one of the challenges that George struggles with. By incorporating a “normal” Cog session into an event like the petting zoo, the therapists can engage the clients in unexpected and spontaneous ways, which is what makes push-in therapy so exciting for our therapists and for the clients. No one has to miss a Fun Friday event because of a therapy session – instead, we turn the event into the therapy session itself.

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