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Meet Merlin the Therapy Sheep and the rest of the flock with Leeds owner, therapist and author Grace Olson in Eccup
National World - LocalTV
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05/04/2024
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]
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