Bodies of Knowledge, Kinetic Melodies, Rhythms of Relating and Affect Attunement in Vital Spaces for Multi-Species Well-Being: Finding Common Ground in Intimate Human-Canine and Human-Equine Encounters.

In this paper, we bring together two separate studies and offer a double similitude as it were, in finding "common ground" and "common worlds" between dog-human and horse-human interactions. Appreciation of the process and mechanism of affect (and affect theory) can enable a greater understanding of child-animal interactions in how they benefit and co-constitute one another in enhancing well-being and flourishing. Studies have thus far fallen short of tapping into this significant aspect of human-animal relationships and the features of human flourishing. There has been a tendency to focus more on related biological and cognitive enhancement (lowering of blood pressure, increase in the "feel good" hormone oxytocin) such as a dog's mere "presence" in the classroom improving tests of executive function and performance. Study A details an affective methodology to explore the finer nuances of child-dog encounters. By undertaking a sensory and walking ethnography in a North East England Primary School with Year 6 (aged 10 and 11 years) and Year 4 (aged 7 and 8 years) children (60 in total), participant observation enabled rich data to emerge. Study B involves two separate groups of young people aged between 16 and 19 years who were excluded from mainstream education and identified as "vulnerable" due to perceived behavioural, social or emotional difficulties. It used mixed methods to gather and examine data from focus groups, interviews and statistics using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Photo elicitation was an additional source of information. This equine intervention facilitated vital spaces for social and emotional well-being. The important significance of touch to children's and young people's well-being suggests a need for "spaces" in classrooms, and wider society, which open up this possibility further and challenge a "hands-off" pedagogy and professional practice.

Walking in rhythm with Deleuze and a dog inside the classroom: being and becoming well and happy together.

This paper plateau describes children's interspecies relation with a classroom canine, utilising posthumanism, post-structuralism and new materialism as its research paradigm and methodology. Once feelings are cognitised or articulated, their true essence can be lost. Therefore, elucidating moment-to-moment child-dog interactions through the lens of affect theory attempts to materialise the invisible, embodied, 'unthought' and non-conscious experience. Through consideration of Deleuzian concepts such as the 'rhizome' and 'Body-without-Organs' being enacted it illuminates new, 'situated knowledge'. This is explicated and revealed using visual methods with 'data' produced by both, the children and their classroom dog such as photographs and video footage mounted on the dogs harness, from a GoPro micro camera. In addition, individual drawings, artefacts and paintings completed by the children are profound points in the research process, which are referred to as 'plateaus'. These then become emergent as a children's comic book where their relationship with 'Dave', their classroom dog is materialised. Through their interspecies relationship both child and dog exercise agency, co-constitute and transform one another and occupy a space of shared relations and multiple subjectivities. The affectual capacities of both child and dog also co-create an affective atmosphere and emotional spaces. Through ethnographic, participant observation and the 'researcher's body' as a tool, they visually create illustrations through the sketching of 'etudes' (drawing exercises) to draw forth this embodied experience to reveal multiple lines and entanglements, mapping a landscape of interconnections and relations.

Promoting Pluralism in Counselling: an Untapped Source of Relational Mapping as Therapeutic Process.

This paper discusses the merits of pluralism in practice. It argues for a wider recognition of creative and integrative approaches, such as those used in the field of children's geographies (involving places and spaces), as a way of unlocking practitioner potential and innovation. By re-thinking child and human development, viewing it as socially, culturally and philosophically bound, through the proposed concept of 'vectors of entanglements', the author seeks to demonstrate and encourage the application of hybrid approaches across multi-disciplinary fields. Through the use of diagramming and mapping the interconnectedness of relationships across space and place, the therapeutic process is brought to life to encourage practitioners to explore the 'invisible' threads that constitute significant meanings to clients.

With a little help from FUN FRIENDS young children can overcome anxiety.

This paper highlights resilience as a key concept when working with young children to improve their emotional wellbeing and reduce anxieties. Supporting children aged 4-7 years with anxiety is a significant area of advancement in terms of therapeutic approaches over the last decade. This paper outlines one such approach that was implemented within a Tier 2 Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) within the northern region of England to determine whether findings from Australian studies could be replicated in the UK. A pilot study was undertaken with a group of young children aged 4-7 years old with symptoms of anxiety. All of the children had been referred to the service because of anxiety related issues, such as social phobia, generalised anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. They received a group intervention, FUN FRIENDS, over a period of 12 weeks. By enabling the children to become more self-sufficient this allowed greater emotional and social skills development. All the children demonstrated improved anxiety scores post intervention, as measured by the Spence Child Anxiety Scale.