Jenny Phillips and Dawn Newman
Published 06 May 2026
Before anything happens, they are already brave enough to be there.
That is not nothing.
Before the animal enters the room, before any planned activity begins, your session has already started. The moment someone walks through the door, or hesitates at the threshold, the work of connection is underway.
WHAT TO EXPECT AT THE DOOR
People Don’t Arrive Ready
One of the most important things to understand before your first animal-assisted session is that participants rarely arrive in a settled, open state ready for everything that you have planned.
They arrive with the full complexity of being human.
Some will be visibly nervous and might be fidgeting, scanning the room or studiously avoiding eye contact. Others will hang back at the entrance, watching how you respond to the room before they commit to entering it. Some might even appear almost over-eager, talking quickly to fill silence.
And many will be managing something quieter: the background worry of what will people think?
Your first task as a practitioner is not to fix any of this. (Phew, right!?) Your first task is to hold this energy close. How can you create the conditions where all of it is welcome and none of it needs to be resolved before anything can happen?
Just as you might read a new animal; noticing tension in the body, the direction of attention, a reluctance to approach – you can apply exactly the same skill to the people entering your space. Begin watching from the moment they arrive.
People entering an unfamiliar or emotionally charged environment do what animals do: they orient, assess, and wait. They are gathering information before they commit to anything. Some of these behaviors might mistakenly be read as resistance… but that’s not what this is.
In animal behaviour, we recognise this as a settling period; the time before trust forms. We don’t rush it in animals, and we should not rush it in people either. Learning to see what this looks like is one of the most transferable skills you already have.
What you might observe:
watching from a distance, stillness or minimal movement, slow scanning of the environment, waiting before approaching, orienting toward the animal without moving closer.
What it tells you:
safety is being assessed, curiosity is beginning to form, the person is self-regulating, they are deciding, connection is becoming possible.
This period matters more than anything that follows. Don’t try to move people through it. Do not fill the silence. Simply be present and let the environment, including the animal, do the quiet work it is already doing.
RECOGNISING SMALL MOMENTS
The First “Yes” Is Smaller Than You Think
When educators first imagine animal-assisted sessions, they often picture a clear, meaningful moment: a child reaching out to stroke a horse, or a young person finally agreeing to hold an animal. These moments do happen (and they, of course, matter) but they are not where the work begins.
The first “yes” is almost always (much) smaller than that.
It might not even be visible as a decision from the outside.
It might look like: accepting a toy or object related to the animal, choosing to stand nearby rather than at the edge of the room, watching quietly without needing to talk, noticing the animal’s movement and tracking it, sitting comfortably in the space, or asking a question… any question.
These small acts of engagement are self-led, safe, and entirely sufficient. When you recognise them, and respond to them as meaningful rather than passing over them in search of something bigger, you signal to the person that they are seen, that their pace is respected, and that this space belongs to them.
THE PRACTITIONER’S ROLE What You Are Really Doing
From the outside, it might look as though you are doing very little. That appearance is part of what makes this work so easy to misunderstand (and so difficult to do well). Skilled presence is not passive. It is a form of sustained, highly calibrated attention.
While a session appears to unfold naturally, you are engaged in watching closely for microchanges in body language, adjusting the physical space without drawing attention to it, waiting deliberately instead of leading, reading who is ready and who is not, choosing silence when silence is what is needed, and introducing an object, a gesture, or a word at precisely the right moment.
This is about responding to the circumstances and helping people to find their way to whatever comes next, rather than being about following a plan. The question you are always asking is not what should happen next?but what is happening right now?
LETTING GO OF THE PLAN
Who Leads? (It Is Not You)
This may be the hardest adjustment for educators coming from structured pedagogical backgrounds… You are not the lead in this space. Neither is the session plan. It’s not even really about the person, or the animal, on their own… but about the connection between the two.
You’ll know when you see it. In the same way you’d see a subtle change in an animal’s posture that tells you the moment has shifted, you might see the same in the people that you support. It might be that the body softens or settles, a hand reaches out, a smile appears unplanned… maybe you catch a moment of genuine stillness. Trust this. Document what you observed, not what you hoped for, and let the meaning surface in its own time.
REFLECTING MEANINGFULLY
Alternative wins to Look For when recording outcomes
Conventional educational frameworks often ask: what did the student achieve?
Animal-assisted learning asks a slightly different question.
What was chosen, noticed, and begun?
Try some of these framings and cues in your recording and see how they help you to notice new outcomes;
“the person was able to…”,
“the person chose to…”,
“the animal responded by…”,
“the person noticed…”,
“something shifted when…”,
“for the first time, they…”
WHEN CIRCUMSTANCES ARE LIMITED
If There Is No Animal Available
Nature is abundant, and animals are everywhere when we learn to notice differently.
If direct animal contact is not possible, consider introducing animal-related toys or figurines, a feather, a shell, or a piece of natural fabric.
Photographs or illustrations can be a good way to introduce connection or it might be that you could start small and house a snail or fish in a tank. Does your space have windows? What about finding a bird outside the window, using live cameras from farms, zoos, or ocean feeds, or binoculars and quiet outdoor time?
Each of these can open the same door as a live animal session and the practitioner’s role remains identical. When working with children and animals, our role is to hold the space, watch for the small signals of engagement, and follow the lead.
THE TAKE AWAY
You don’t need the perfect animal, the perfect space, or the perfect plan to begin. You need a good understanding of your participants (both human and animal), an ability to read the moment… and to give yourself space to notice what’s happening when you’re in it..
Animal-Assisted 