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The Science Behind Why Animal Visits Matter in Dementia Care
A look at what the research actually says about animal-assisted visits for people living with dementia — and why Dunham Care welcomes donkeys and dogs into our Herne Bay care home.
On a recent afternoon at Herne Bay Manor, our dementia care home in Herne Bay, Kent, Banks the therapy donkey and his owner Joy paid a visit that residents are still talking about. Our Activities Manager, Gemma, described it simply:
“This was a memorable day for Herne Bay Manor. The joy that Banks the therapy donkey had on everyone was so magical. The residents loved it and one of the ladies was even in tears she was so happy.” — Gemma, Activities Manager, Herne Bay Manor |
It's the kind of moment that's easy to think of as simply heartwarming — and it is. But it's also something else: a small, real-world example of an effect that researchers have been studying in dementia care for decades. Animal visits aren't just a pleasant addition to a care home's activity calendar. For people living with dementia specifically, there's a growing — if still developing — body of evidence for why they matter.
Why animals reach people that words sometimes can't
Dementia often affects short-term memory and verbal communication before it touches emotional responsiveness or long-held memories from decades earlier. This is part of why approaches like reminiscence therapy — drawing on memories from the distant past rather than asking someone to recall what happened that morning — have become a well-established part of dementia care. A Cochrane systematic review of randomised controlled trials found evidence that reminiscence-based approaches can support mood, communication and quality of life for people living with dementia, though the strength of that evidence varies by setting and study.
Animals offer a connection along a similar, non-verbal route, just through an entirely different door. Warmth, touch, physical presence — none of it asks anything of someone who has lost the words to describe how they're feeling. For a resident who might struggle to hold a conversation, reaching out to stroke a donkey's nose or settle a hand on a dog's back requires no vocabulary at all.
What the research says about animal therapy for dementia patients
The evidence here is genuinely encouraging — and it's growing. A 2025 review of the research looked across nearly 60 studies and found that visits from real animals were linked to lower rates of depression and better cognitive performance among the people taking part. Interestingly, robotic animal companions used for comparison in some of those studies didn't have the same effect — it really does seem to be the presence of a living, breathing animal that makes the difference. An earlier review of the evidence found a similar link to improved mood, though its effect on day-to-day memory and independence was less clear-cut.
There's promising evidence on agitation too. In one study on a dementia care ward, residents were noticeably calmer on the days a therapy dog visited compared to days without. What researchers haven't fully answered yet is how long that calming effect lasts beyond the visit itself — so while the evidence for animal visits helping in the moment is strong, the full long-term picture is still being built. As with most things in this field, it's not a cure-all, but it's a real, measurable difference.
Why care homes choose animal visits over pet ownership
Alzheimer's Society's own guidance on pets and dementia is candid about the practical side of animal ownership — the capacity to take on a long-term commitment, the day-to-day demands of feeding and care, and the question of who takes over if the person no longer can. Their guidance specifically points to regular visits or semi-regular contact with an animal as an alternative that can offer many of the same emotional benefits without that burden. That's essentially the model a care home is built to deliver: a scheduled visit from a therapy animal and its handler, so residents get the connection without the responsibility — and without it falling to already-stretched care staff to manage full-time animal care on top of everything else.
Why donkeys, specifically
Donkeys are a less-studied corner of this field than dogs. The researchers behind one of the most detailed surveys of donkey-assisted work, based in Italy, are upfront that “scientific literature about donkeys involved in [animal-assisted interventions] is scarce.” But the same survey found donkeys are already the third most used animal in these interventions after dogs and horses, working with a wide range of groups that specifically includes elderly people living with dementia.
What donkeys bring isn't something designed into a programme — it's closer to their nature. Handlers consistently point to an unhurried, patient calm: they don't rush, they tolerate a slow approach, and they read as unmistakably gentle even to someone who might find a more boisterous animal overwhelming.
For residents of a certain generation in a seaside town like Herne Bay, a donkey isn't an exotic novelty either — it's a genuinely familiar image. Donkey rides on English beaches were a fixture of childhood summers for much of the twentieth century, so for many residents, a visit from Banks may be tapping into exactly the kind of long-held, personally lived memory that reminiscence-based approaches are built around.
Animal therapy and dementia activities at our Herne Bay care home
This is why Dunham Care builds regular visits from both donkeys and dogs into life across our homes, rather than treating them as an occasional novelty. Here at our Herne Bay Manor care home, just minutes from the seafront, Gemma's account of the afternoon Banks visited says it best — a resident moved to tears by nothing more complicated than a donkey's company. It's exactly the kind of moment the research above is trying to explain and measure. We don't need a study to tell us it mattered to her. But it's worth knowing that what we watched happen that afternoon sits within a real, if still-developing, body of evidence about why it happened.
None of this means an animal visit is a cure, or a substitute for skilled nursing and person-centred dementia care — it isn't, and the research is honest about how much is still not fully understood. What it does suggest is that the small, ordinary things — a donkey's nose against an open palm, a dog settling quietly at someone's feet — carry more weight than they might first appear to. At Dunham Care, that's exactly why we keep making room for them.
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