Ahead of National Pet Day, we meet Therapist & Author Grace Olson in Eccup who has recently published a book about her therapy sheep, Merlin.
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00:00 They're absolutely lovely. They're absolutely lovely, mum.
00:03 This is Merlin the therapy sheep and this is his owner Grace Olsen, a therapist and
00:08 author. I met them and the rest of the flock in Eckup to discover how they've been helping
00:12 people.
00:13 What is a therapy sheep?
00:15 So well here we have Merlin who is performing very well for the camera and what he does
00:21 is he just allows people to cuddle him. That's the magic. So what happens is people come
00:27 here to my field. Often they're terminally ill, suffering from a lot of fear because
00:33 dying makes you obviously feel terrified. When they come here it's a very unusual experience
00:39 for a sheep to want to be near you. As you can see Merlin is very interactive. And just
00:45 by being with an unusual animal that just makes people start to feel happy, it makes
00:52 them laugh and that opens them up so that they can then start talking about their deeper
00:57 issues.
00:58 They're just magical. I mean people look at sheep and they just think, you know, they're
01:02 just animals that are in the distance, they're on a hill. But actually each one of them has
01:08 a distinct personality and they're very loving, like dogs. I've been a therapist for about,
01:14 God, nearly 30 years doing massage and different talking therapies. Then I got my horses and
01:19 then I learned equine facilitated coaching. They mirror what the person is feeling. So
01:26 you can read the person by looking at the horse because a lot of people, they find it
01:30 hard to talk. The horse will tell you what they're not saying. Then I accidentally ended
01:34 up with sheep and the sheep just decided to just get involved with the therapy and that's
01:39 how sheep therapy happened. People have literally left here smiling, people who have not smiled
01:45 for years and that, it's, what's better than that?
01:50 After writing a novel about how horses healed her postnatal depression, Grace has now penned
01:54 Merlin's memoir in the style of a fable. She hopes more people begin to appreciate
01:59 how special horses and sheep are.
02:02 Sheep are amazing pets. They really are because they're so loving. They've brought out of
02:07 me a bigger amount of love than I thought I could ever feel. And they're just fun and
02:14 they keep your grass down. So we've had them at home mowing the lawn, they get rid of weeds.
02:20 They're just really useful as well as being lovely. And then they've got all this lovely
02:24 wool so you can make jumpers and things. I think they are the best pets ever. If you've
02:29 got a big garden, there is in fact a tiny breed of sheep. If anybody wants some pet
02:33 sheep, it's a French breed called, I think it's Oussan. So it's like really, really little.
02:41 They stay as small as lambs. So if you've got a big enough garden, you could have a
02:45 flock of it and you'll never have to mow your lawn again. Brilliant.
02:49 Lovely. Sorry, he just got me off guard. I thought he'd just stay still and then he hit me.
02:55 You're not giving me enough attention.
02:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]