Therapy For Civilians, Too

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2008-04-29-therapy-pets_N.htm

'Ordinary' pets to the rescue on human-animal therapy teams
Updated 4/30/2008 11:13 AM
By Sharon L. Peters, Special for USA TODAY

DENVER — Most of the time, Biscuit the bulldog is just a regular stubby-legged young dude who runs around the yard collecting sticks and making everyone laugh with his goofy antics.

But each Friday, once he dons his green work vest, he adjusts his jowly mug into an expression of genial concern, discards all thoughts of canine capers and calmly sets about the business of cheering up stroke patients or encouraging children in their classrooms.

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"This is his calling," says his owner, Shannon Pryor, 28, of Wheat Ridge. She recognized Biscuit's highly empathetic nature when he was a wee pup and she was convalescing with a broken foot.

Pryor got herself and Biscuit registered as a pet therapy team through Denver Pet Partners when he was 1 year old, and now they spend Friday mornings at either the Easter Seals stroke rehabilitation center or at Pine Grove Elementary School.

Across the country, thousands of pets and their owners are spending time with the infirm, the depressed or the distressed, as well as with legions of children and adults in difficult straits who get a boost from the unconditional acceptance and cheerful demeanor of an animal.

Therapy dogs, as they are known, are not service dogs, which go through years of specialized training to assist people who have disabilities. Therapy dogs are house pets that have a special affinity for people, a placid demeanor and solid, reliable obedience skills. The ability they have to motivate, cheer, stabilize and calm people began to be widely publicized in recent years. Now, doctors, counselors, teachers, librarians, physical therapists and crisis managers are so convinced of the positive power of animals that they're lining up to request teams to spend healing time with people in their charge.

The pet-owning public is responding in ever-burgeoning numbers. The training program by the Delta Society in Bellevue, Wash., is used by dozens of therapy-animal groups nationwide. It has more than 10,000 teams registered and has experienced 6% to 8% growth a year. Similar growth is reported by Therapy Dog International in Flanders, N.J., which has 15,000 handlers and 18,000 dogs registered, and Therapy Dogs Inc. in Cheyenne, Wyo., which has more than 10,000 dog/handler teams. Thousands more people and pets are registered with smaller groups or simply do their thing without group affiliation.

Training sessions to help owners prepare usually are booked solid. "We always have a waiting list," says Denver Pet Partners' Diana McQuarrie, who conducts four sessions a year.

Cats and birds get into the act

With each passing month, the whole pet-therapy arena seems to evolve:

•Dogs aren't the only species being used. Cats, llamas, miniature horses, rabbits and birds have been trained and registered.

•Dozens of new applications are being tried. Therapy animals are frequenting schools to help with reading programs or with special-education students, funeral homes to comfort survivors, disaster sites to help quell the chaos and prisons to offer non-judgmental friendship. The U.S. military sent the first therapy dogs to a war zone in December to help the troops in Iraq.

"Every year we see more activity, more acceptance," says Marie Belew Wheatley, president and CEO of the American Humane Association in Denver. Wheatley is so convinced of the trajectory of pet therapy that American Humane took Denver Pet Partners under its umbrella last year and is creating a division this year to study and perpetuate the human/animal bond. A key goal will be to help communities establish or enhance programs. "I predict (pet therapy) will be an integral part of how maladies of all sorts are treated in the future," she says.

Contrary to popular belief, there's no ideal breed for this sort of volunteer work. "They can be 3 pounds to 150 pounds, of any breed," Delta Society's JoAnn Turnbull says. Some dogs have disabilities, and "30% of the dogs we register are from shelters or rescue groups."

Rewards are in the smiles

Stories abound about animals so adept at plugging into people in need "that the handlers are no longer guiding the dogs; the dog knows intuitively which person needs the most attention, and the handler just lets it happen," Turnbull says.

Says Therapy Dogs' Teri Meadows, "Getting a child to speak who has been quiet for months, or experiencing any of the hundreds of other happy reactions your dog can get from someone, well, there's just nothing else like it."

Pryor recalls the time Biscuit was sitting quietly with a stroke patient who was listlessly doing physical therapy, reaching forward to pet the dog, but only with her good side. Biscuit got up and lay on the side of the woman that had been damaged by the stroke, the side she wouldn't use. The therapist asked her to reach with that side and pat the dog. With great effort, she did.

"And Biscuit leaped up and licked her," Pryor says. "He knew this was a great moment, and it's almost as if he were congratulating her."

Licking of patients is a no-no, and Pryor told him to stop. But the woman announced she liked it "and smiled a huge smile, the first smile I'd ever seen from her."

Says Ursula Kempe of Therapy Dog International: "When a dog brightens the life of a person, it's the greatest. It's why people do this with their animals."