Our Mentors & Dogs

I’m sure our dogs experience a range of emotions including happiness, anxiety, fearfulness and excitability. How they behave and their body language can help our tutors to understand what they are feeling and whether they are physically and mentally fit and healthy. Our tutors live with their therapy dogs and know the behaviour of their…

Relationship building is a core ethic of ours that ensures Canine Comprehension tutors are investing in the relationships of their students and caregivers to best achieve shared goals. Positive relationships between tutors and students are among the most commonly cited variables associated with effective teaching practices. If the relationship is strong, instructional strategies seem to…

We are delighted to be able to offer funded animal assisted programs to facilitate supportive connections in the Mallacoota area and surrounding locations. Individual sessions for young people, P-12 Our small group sessions focus on: Our tutor, Rini grew up and lives in Mallacoota, experienced the recent and ongoing challenges her community faces. She is able to offer group and individual sessions with her therapy…

Let me tell you a little about how I ended up training dogs to teach kids how to learn. I have always loved dogs.  I have always loved stories. I didn’t always love reading. When I was a kid, I often hated being in the classroom. I found school work difficult, boring and often pointless….

Our AAI dogs are in classrooms and homes everyday. Having a dog work around children requires that dog to have the highest standards of training, cleanliness and manners.  Minnie and Oscar, Sarah’s AAI dogs are seeing three groups of clients today. At Canine Comprehension we have a routine that the dogs go through to make…

The Canine Comprehension team dedicate their days to encourage children to enjoy learning. The ‘tools’ we use to motivate children are Animal Assisted Intervention (AAI) dogs. Animal-assisted intervention, at its most basic, means including animals in therapeutic work with humans. Dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, horses, donkeys, llamas, alpacas, pot-bellied pigs and birds can…

Oscar, my dog and co worker had to go to the vet yesterday. He had an odd lump on his gum, which had turned funny and we thought we better get it checked out. The vet wanted to surgically remove it, just in case it was something nasty. So I found myself at the vet…

One of our biggest challenges when talking to potential clients about how Canine Comprehension can improve the lives of young people through Animal Assisted Intervention (AAI) activities is explaining the high training expectations of our dogs. When we mention that our dogs work with us and assist in teaching by making the learning experience positive…

I didn’t always love my job. I used to be a teacher. I found my work frustrating and rewarding in equal measures. I worked with many young people whose main focus could not be my lessons because their anxiety and stress levels were unmanageable. Beyond Blue report that one in fourteen young Australians (6.9%) aged…

Chachka is a 3 year old mixed breed dog who makes many of our students smile, feel more comfortable at school and encouraged to learn. Jovana, our Tutor rescued Chachka from ‘Starting Over Dog Rescue’ in February 2016. She was found wandering the streets pregnant when she was only one year old. We took a moment to…