Canistherapy: From personal tragedy to helping the others

In visual essay from 2015–2019, is the story of a woman who, despite her complicated health condition and an uneasy life, emanates positive energy and transmits it to others by means of professional canistherapy. “I admit, I had nightmares after visiting inpatient facilities, I couldn´t sleep. Petra told me at that time: Close the door behind you. What is inside stays inside. Don´t take it home; otherwise, you´ll get mad. But now as I look at those pictures, I´m simply destroyed,” Treacherous illness makes it impossible for Petra to live a normal life. It is about a huge brain cyst spread all over one of the hemispheres and unexpected epileptic seizures related to it. According to doctors, she is 11 years after death. From the family life, she suddenly found herself on the periphery of the society, in the environment of the block of flats soaked with crime called “the Blue House,”- where drug addicts, prostitutes and various criminals lived. However, also people suffering from cancer, depressions and mental disturbances lived there. Petra and her partner provided themselves with dogs for protection and with the training for the foresight of the epileptic seizures, as well. The special training for „Canistherapy“, which is a helpful psychotherapeutic method, allows Petra to help people who have no other choice but to live in various social institutes or old people’s homes. Paradox? A person living in one room, without heating and gas, with three dogs and cats, from money hardly sufficient to pay the rent, helps people selflessly and sometimes completely for free. Unfortunately, after six years, all the inhabitants had to leave the block of flats from one day to another and they found themselves on the street. Petra found herself a new room in a house located in the countryside, where the light of hope that she could continue in helping the others shines through. Olga Havlova Foundation prize at the Czech Press Photo 2016.