In the senior scientist's office, a lonely dog chew sits on the bookcase amongst reports, scientific articles and research data. On the floor, tucked away in a plastic bag behind some binders, a catlike therapeutic teddy hides. Not exactly the work-related items normally associated with a researcher who usually occupies herself with behavioural analyses of pigs, horses and poultry at Aarhus University's research centre AU Foulum.

Karen Thodberg from Aarhus University's usual surroundings are animal barns and pastures, but she has ventured into new and unknown territory in a research project regarding therapy-dogs and the elderly. Instead of livestock it is the elderly, dogs, robotic seals and therapeutic teddies that are involved in the investigation. The point of the project is to see whether contact with therapy-dogs has a beneficial effect on the elderly, and if that is the case, how the effect shows itself.

The project has presented the researchers with new challenges. It is one thing to carry out behavioural studies in a piggery under controlled conditions, with pigs or chickens as the research subjects and with trained experimental technicians as assistants. It is entirely another to run scientific investigations at a nursing home where the ”research subjects” are elderly people, the conditions are variable and the daily focus is caring for the elderly, not research work.

Planned, but unpredictable
The experiments have been planned out in detail, but things do not always go as expected:

-This research project lies outside the typical research environment as we know it, and it has been an exciting challenge to have elderly people as research subjects. They can, of course, have days where they are feeling sluggish, sleep in, have other visitors or just don't feel in the mood to participate. These are things we have to take into account and be flexible about, whilst we at the same time have to ensure standardised conditions. This of course places some demands on us, explains senior scientist Karen Thodberg.

On occasion, the researchers from AarhusUniversity visited 17 elderly people in one day alone. Apart from just the rush, the researchers sometimes felt things wore on their emotions.

- The project has, at times, given us some tough experiences, which we usually don't encounter when working with animals. Examples of this have been when we have encountered very ill people or death. We've spent a lot of ourselves on this, says Karen Thodberg.

Unique dataset
It has been incredibly exciting and educational, and now comes the next exciting phase: to study and analyse the outstanding and extensive dataset together with our collaborators, psychiatric scientists from Aarhus Universitychers. The behavioural researchers from Aarhus University expect to have completed processing the data over the course of the summer of 2013.

There is plenty to work on, as the researchers visited almost 120 elderly people at four nursing homes with a total of 12 ten-minute visits per participant. The elderly were visited twice per week by either a therapy-dog, a robot seal or a teddy. Their reactions were noted and filmed. In this way the researchers are able to compare the effect of a visiting dog with other types of visits.

- All three ”animals” invite people to touch them, but offer different levels of interaction. We have registered to what extent the elderly have touched or talked to the animal or object. Some of the elderly cannot move, but are able to show their interest by, for example, looking at the animal the entire time, says Karen Thodberg.

The elderly people went through different psychiatric evaluations before and after the experiment with the participation of doctors and researchers from Aarhus University hospital. With the help of a movement sensor on the wrist it was possible to measure how well the elderly people slept at night. In doing so it is possible to tell if the elderly sleep more calmly when they have been visited by a dog, robot seal or a teddy.

Love on four legs
Many of the elderly miss having physical contact and the unreserved contact that an animal can offer. The investigations carried out to date suggest a positive effect of therapy-dogs, but this is the first time such a comprehensive study has been carried out, where both the acute and long-term effects of contact with a therapy-dog are investigated and compared with standardised control visits.

- When we have analysed the data we will be able to say, with scientific grounding, whether there indeed is a measureable positive effect or not. The staff at the nursing homes have told us that some of the elderly eat more, say more and seem happier when they have been visited by a dog, robotic seal or a teddy.

The dogs in the experiment came from Trygfonden's therapy-dog scheme and are normal family dogs in their ”civilian life”. Each dog was used twice a week for six weeks.

The project was started to create scientific grounding for Trygfonden's pilot project regarding therapy-dogs. Read more about Trygfonden's project and the dogs' “dating service” here.

Further information: Senior scientist Karen Thodberg, email: karen.thodberg@agrsci.dk, telephone: +45 8715 7938