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Animal-assisted therapy in counseling (AAT-C) is growing in popularity. However, there has been no theory to guide the practice and supervision of this field. In response to this need, I developed human-animal relational theory (HART). HART is a model that explains how AAT-C is effective and serves as a guide for practice and supervision. I describe HART constructs in a manner consistent with neurobiological effects of human-animal interaction. HART provides guidance on how to identify and effectively process significant human-animal relational moments (SHARMS) in counseling for therapeutic impact. I present real cases to exemplify implementation of HART.
Cynthia K. Chandler (Wed,) studied this question.