Today we’re going to learn about dogs and therapy. First, we’ll meet our featured guest, who will share some personal experiences and definitions to help us better understand what these dogs in our world do. In part two, we’ll get our history fix and find out what many people look for in a therapy dog. Finally, we’ll finish with a couple of questions from ONE OF YOU and get some parting advice from our guest.

Read on for key takeaways, resource links, and the full transcript.

Introduction

Welcome to episode number nine of Dogs in Our World. I’m Adam Winston. Today we’re going to learn about dogs and therapy. First, we’ll meet our featured guest, who will share some personal experiences and definitions to help us better understand what these dogs in our world do. In part two, we’ll get our history fix and find out what many people look for in a therapy dog. Finally, we’ll finish with a couple of questions from ONE OF YOU and get some parting advice from our guest.

I’ve been looking forward to getting this episode into your ears. Please, help more people find this program by leaving a review in iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Or just tell two people about the show. Ok. Here we go.

I have met so many cool people throughout this series. Today’s guest is no different. Ann: Are the levels ok? She is a clinical social worker, counselor, and author who has many years of experience integrating dogs into her practice.

Ann: Hi. I’m Ann Howie. I live currently in the Olympia, Washington area. My passion is dogs and their people. I want to enhance the relationships between the two of them.

Ann began our conversation by telling me about her early life in the country on her family’s farm. With no siblings or neighbor kids to keep her entertained, young Ann Howie’s playmates were often of the four-legged variety.

Ann: Actually, there were some chickens, so they had two legs, but I played with the animals.

And from a very young age, Ann began to understand that we could have relationships with animals in a way that is very similar to our relationships with people.

Ann: I understood that they had opinions and that they could express their opinions. We just don’t usually know even to listen for them or pay attention to those opinions. So, when I was finishing up my master’s degree and feeling like boy, there was nothing in the world that was gonna encourage me to go back to school, I read about what was called then, pet therapy. And my first thought was, THAT I would go back to school for.

So, Ann went back to school, and soon after, she got a job working in a psychiatric hospital. There she began to see, first hand, how her dog could help hard-to-reach patients.

Ann: This was many, many years ago. The client was about 24, female, she was suffering from postpartum depression and she had chosen not to speak. She had been suicidal and her parents had committed her to the psychiatric hospital. I’m embarrassed to say that she had been in that hospital for six weeks and we had not gotten her to speak.

Now, keep in mind, Ann was hired to work at the hospital by herself and not with a dog. But, she was looking for the right moment, and patient, to practice what was then called “pet therapy”.

Ann: I had been talking to my supervisor about animal assisted work and she said let’s wait for the right time. Well, at this staffing meeting, the docs said, “I don’t know what to do. I’m willing to try anything.” So, my ears perked up. “Really, anything?” They said,” yes”. I said, “Ok, this is what I want to try.”

The patient was still in the locked unit and choosing not to leave her room. Ann talked with the young woman’s parents who said that she was a dog lover. For security reasons, Ann’s little Sheltie dog wasn’t allowed to enter the locked unit, so she devised a plan. If the patient was willing to come to her office, she could spend time with Ann’s dog. And, after a couple of days …

Ann: – She did. And, when she first walked into the room, she knelt down and went to the dog. And didn’t say anything, but they were just interacting together. Huge success right there for her to leave the unit and to be interested in someone other than herself. Within a couple of days, she was whispering to my dog. She wouldn’t whisper to me, wouldn’t talk to me, but she started talking to the dog in a whisper. I wish I could take credit for what happened next, but it truly was the dog. My dog stopped listening to her if she was whispering. She had to start speaking louder in order for the dog to listen. So, within six more weeks, this woman was able to be discharged. She worked with my dog, teaching my dog tricks, taking my dog out for walks, so she gradually was becoming more comfortable out in the world. She was learning about how to make decisions herself as we were figuring out how the dog was learning things. It was one of those miraculous, first patients. Not everybody has that kind of a big thing happening, but it couldn’t be a better example of the impact of a dog on a person.

Adam: What a powerful story. And so that gives me a little more perspective on, I think, what it is you do. Is that kind of a prime example of what a, quote-unquote, therapy dog is?

Ann: Exactly. There is no legal definition of a therapy dog. So, people who work in the field have a generally excepted definition, and that is a dog that is individually trained to go into a facility with the dog’s handler to visit. It may be visiting to simply improve quality of life and that’s not an only, that’s not a small thing. But there are no specific goals. It’s a general improved quality of life. Or, that dog can go with the handler to participate in therapy.

Adam: When you say handler, do you mean the person who the dog belongs to, the owner?

Ann: Usually it is the owner. There are occasions when it would be someone else who has worked with the dog and knows the dog and they have a relationship, a working relationship, but usually it is the owner.

Adam: Do you have any other personal stories that you can tell me that can really help me get a better picture of what these therapy dogs are and do?

Ann: Yes. I’ll give you an example of when I was working as a volunteer in a rehabilitation unit, and I brought my dog into work with a physical therapist and as we were walking into the unit, the physical therapist was wheeling a patient out back to her room. And the therapist’s face was stormy. Something had gone wrong. I don’t know what it was, but it was wrong, but that patient leaned forward and held out her hands and invited me to bring my dog to see her. I checked in, looked up at the therapist and the therapist nodded eagerly,” Yes, yes, please go ahead and see her.” The therapist looked stunned and we spent about ten minutes in the hallway, with that woman leaning forward stroking the dog, petting the dog, talking to me and then the therapist took her back to her room. I didn’t know what had happened, but I had to go find that therapist afterwards to find out. And she said, “We had just been in the gym and this woman had had a stroke and she felt very unstable, she didn’t have a very good sense of balance.” And what the therapist had wanted her to do was lean forward and the woman was too afraid to do that. And she refused to participate in therapy. Yet, here we were walking down the hallway and naturally, she leaned forward to pet the dog. So, for ten minutes, she was leaning forward exercising those core muscles and retraining those neural pathways in her brain. That’s why the therapist was so thrilled. She got to have her therapy session that day by working with my dog, um, that she wasn’t going to have without the dog.

This show is all about getting answers from the source. I know Adam P. Karp in episode four briefly talked about some of this, but I want to make sure we have our terminology right. I often encounter confusion regarding some of this stuff, so I asked Ann to make sure we understand where Therapy Dogs fall in relation to all of the animals who help people.

Ann: Therapy dog is trained and goes in with either a therapist or volunteer to participate in therapy or improve quality of life. Now, many people in the general public think of a therapy dog as a dog who lives with them and helps them feel better. That is not the generally excepted definition of a therapy dog. Now, there are dogs called Emotional Support Animals, not just dogs. It truly can be just about any kind of animal, and those animals are recognized in housing, federal housing, and in aviation travel. An airline may allow an emotional support animal on the plane with someone and a landlord that doesn’t ordinarily except pets may allow an emotional support animal to be present in that person’s housing. That is different from a service animal. Service animals can only be dogs or miniature horses under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And, there is a legal definition for service animal and that is a dog, or a miniature horse, that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability. So, a service animal does work just for that person with a disability. Basically, is on duty 24/7 for that person. A therapy animal, on the other hand, might be with me, but is not necessarily working for me in helping me perform my tasks, but it is, in essence, working for my clients. The people that I am visiting if I’m a volunteer, or the people that are coming into my office, receiving therapy from me.

Adam: So, let’s talk about that. I’m sitting here in your office, which is a nice, comfortable, warm, inviting environment with a comfortable couch and chairs and I feel like I could talk about anything in here. And so, then your human comes into this nice lovely room and sits down to talk with you about stuff that’s going on and then you have a dog here.

Ann: Yes.

Adam: And how do you, where does the dog come into play in having a chat here in this room?

Ann: And, I’ll first say that the dog isn’t present for every client. Either the client isn’t interested, or might be afraid, or perhaps it is just a day off for a dog. Because the dog, a therapy dog is not going to work, my therapy dog is not going to work five days a week. Or even two days in a row. My therapy dogs get a chance to rest in between times.

Adam: Is this why I don’t have a dog here right now?

Ann: That’s why there’s no dog here right now.

Adam: I caught the dog on his or her off day?

Ann: Yep.

Adam: Ok, so you’re not some sort of crazy dog lady who constantly has a dog around no matter who the client is? The client does come first and maybe not every client that comes to you in need wants to necessarily have a dog with the.

Ann: So, let’s say you do have a human client who is open to the idea of having your dog join in a session. Now what? What does the dog do?

Ann: I’ll give you an example from one of my clients. Uh, she didn’t know quite how to explain what was going on, but she wasn’t happy with her life. And she wanted to be doing things differently. And I had a standard poodle in my office at that time and she was a dog lover and I said couldn’t we just try something. And she said sure, and so she was ok with the dog getting up on the couch with her and I gave her a brush and explained how to use that particular brush – and simply asked her take the brush and stroke from his head down to his hips or his tail. And just do that. Let me see you do that a few times. And she was able to do that three times, it seemed like a very simple thing to her, but on the fourth time, the dog raised up his head and looked at her. And she jumped and she stopped and she said, “Why did he look at me?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know. Let’s think about that. What was going on that was different? Why do you think that he stopped being so relaxed and looked at you?” And as we began to talk about it more she said, “Well, I lost my focus. I lost my concentration. It was just such a simple thing I wasn’t continuing to focus on it.” And, so, then she said let’s try it again and she really tried to maintain her focus instead of allowing her mind to go in a million different directions. Well that meant a lot to her and she came back in a couple of weeks saying that she hadn’t been able to forget that experience – She knew that she had affected him in a way that kind of surprised him and at least made him raise his head and so she was working at applying that information throughout every day in helping herself remain focused instead of being distracted. So, there’s one tiny example.

Can I tell you, again, how great it was to spend an hour of Ann’s valuable time in her office? She was such a wealth of information. Coming up in part two, Ann Howie will give us our history fix. You know I got to. And, she’ll also explain what she looks for in a therapy dog.

Adam: How long has this kind of work been going on?

Ann: Well, we can go way back to the ninth century.

Adam: Wow!

Ann: In Geel, Belgium and they had people with disabilities working with farm animals as part of their treatment.

Adam: Then, in 1792, the York Retreat for Quakers in England included a variety of animals in the residential treatment, um …

Adam: Do you know how they were using animals back then?

Ann: I don’t know for sure.

Adam: But there’s references to it huh?

Ann: There are references and my understanding is that it was very similar to residential treatment programs today where animals and nature were integrated into their daily lives. That was part of their routine, part of what they did, and probably they ate the animals, too. They butchered the chickens and ate them, or butchered the beef and ate them, as part of their life and the way that they were finding out how to live their lives to the best of their ability.

Adam: In the United States, then, we can jump to about the 60’s and 70’s.

Ann: Ok.

Adam: I’m sorry to interrupt, but it seems like this whole 1970’s decade, there’s a lot going on. In almost every one of my episodes, people talk about, “Well in the 70’s we changed it, you know”

Ann: Yep. There was something about the 70’s, I agree. Actually, I guess I can go back a little bit further than that. World War 2, the Air Force convalescence center in Pawling, New York had treatment for returning G.I.’s that included working with animals.

Adam: Freud was a Chowchow enthusiast, too?

Ann: He was.

Adam: Aw. See, that was my first dog. I love Chow Chows.

Ann: Boris Levinson was the first person who really started writing about it, now we’re in the 70’s. And, he was a child psychologist and he really wrote even the first book Pet-Oriented Child Psychotherapy, and that was published in 1969. So, he was one of the first therapists, and he was scorned. People were making a great deal of fun of him for including a dog in his treatment sessions. His dog was named Jingles, and an organization now called Pet Partners that was called Delta Society in, oh boy, I’m sorry. I don’t remember exactly when they incorporated, but they have a Spirit of Jingles award that they gave yearly, harkening back to Jingles, Boris Levinson’s dog.

Adam: That’s great. You’ve given us enough to look it up, and just so you know, what I do after our, my discussions with folks is I go back, I look at everything online and find articles and support references and then I add it all to the show notes right there on my page. So, anything we talk about, any books that are mentioned, or people’s names that are mentioned, Fade Out-

Adam: Are there any kind of new things that are happening right now in the world of therapy dogs? Are there any new discoveries or new uses for dogs that people are doing now that they haven’t in the past?

Ann: Well, I’m so glad you brought that up. Terminology is really important to people who are working in this field. And it is very easy for us to say the word “use”. You know. What are we doing? How are we using dogs? And by the same token, without going overboard on political correctness, people who work in the field feel very strongly that we are respecting the animals and their opinions. Taking good care of them and their welfare. So, we’re cautious about using the word “use”.

Adam: Enlighten me, yeah, please. This is what I want to learn.

Ann: We prefer to say, like, we are “working with a dog”, or, uh, well, I think that’s my preferred way of saying it. That I’m working with a dog or working with a horse or whatever kind of other animal. So, one of the biggest changes in the field is that the therapists are becoming much more aware, that they got their degree, they got their credential and they knew about how to work with people. And they then just thought, ok, I can just incorporate a dog or a cat or whatever into what I’m doing without really knowing about that animal. Or that species. And so a big piece that I’m very excited to see is that more colleges and universities are providing either certificates or individual courses to help people know more about the species that they are working with. It’s essential for animal welfare, animal wellbeing that they be incorporated in a way that is respectful to them, and not just used as a tool.

Adam: You’re right. Language is a very powerful thing, especially when we’re talking about dogs, but you also kind of, again, you’re one of the many people who are part of this project who are helping me on my journey. And helping kind of keep me on the right – as I kind of find my way in dog welfare industry and you again remind me of something that Julie Forbes talked about. Which is, we’ve got to get away from this kind of older school philosophy where dogs or animals are there strictly for our use and purpose and be utilized. And you reminded me what she was trying to express to me, which was that we should look at our relationship with dogs as a partnership. As not an up down chain of command, but as a circular in and out.

Ann: Yes.

Adam: … So, thank you again for kind of steering me on the right path.

Ann: And, thank you for the work you’re doing in helping other people see that as well.

Adam: And this is really what I want to do. I don’t know that much about therapy dogs. That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m not doing episodes about things that I already know and then I find someone to support it. This is my journey where each person that I talk to, whether it’s a fine art collector or a therapist, everyone is showing me how these animals are both ubiquitous and instrumental in almost every aspect of human life.

Ann: Definitely. And that’s one of the reasons why I wrote the Teaming with Your Therapy Dog book, was to emphasize, yeah, it is a relationship. And, it is a partnership. It’s not just a one-way street.

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