The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Therapy animals lend a paw or hoof
When Boone, a Great Dane/Labrador mix, walks into Connecticut Hospice in Branford, people can’t help but smile. But he’s there on business as one of several certified therapy dogs that visit weekly to cheer up patients.
During Boone’s visits to Hospice, one can see many examples of the love people feel from him. Patients and staff members alike respond with joy and excitement when he points his wet nose toward them wagging his tail. He and his handler, Kay Codish, have been working together for about two years visiting hospices, women’s shelters and Alzheimer’s residences. Boone has recently satisfied all the requirements for medical alert service animals under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“I think he’s found his calling,” Codish said.
During a visit with one patient, Gloria McGeever, Boone sat calmly with her as she fed him treats. Then she couldn’t stop smiling and with him around, recalling the animals she had in her life and other happy memories about her family.
“It makes the day better,” McGeever said. “I think it does for everyone.”
“Intuitively, we believe animals are good for well being, but we’ve appreciated more that it can help in a real medical way,” said Aubrey Fine, a leading expert in the field of human-animal interactions and licensed psychologist who uses his own golden retrievers during sessions with patients.
Animal-assisted therapy is beneficial for any sort of a diagnosis, need or health issue, Professor of Occupational Therapy at Quinnipiac University Donna Latella said in an email.
She’s been working in the field of animal therapy for 30 years and said research in starting to grow on the subject, adding to the acceptance of working with animals.
“Studies show interactions with animals can decrease heart rate, blood pressure, and stress levels. Animals can help with loneliness and purpose, decrease anxiety, and increase social interactions. Therapeutic riding can help with neurological, motor and sensory challenges in adults and children and very commonly with autism ... the list goes on and on!”
Many types of animals are used in therapy or for social support, not only dogs. Horses are widely used in therapy to help learn social awareness, behavioral and emotional control, fine and gross motor coordination, language skills and postural alignment.
At Red Skye Foundation in Bethany, Claire Wiseman, a licensed clinical psychologist, and Niki Cogliano, a certified equine specialist, use horses, dogs, goats and donkeys in therapeutic sessions with patients.
“The concept is people feel good with animals,” Wiseman said, so they more readily talk to her, or even the animals. As a clinical psychologist, she specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a talking therapy that can help a person manage problems, such as anxiety and depression, by changing the way that person thinks and behaves. It can also be useful for treating other mental and physical health problems.
Wiseman offers a special type of animal assisted therapy called equine assisted psychotherapy to treat patients dealing with depression, anxiety, behavioral issues, substance abuse and eating disorders. This type of therapy requires patients to establish a relationship with one of her horses — Brigitta, Zippy and Makaday — and direct the animal to perform specific actions in an open arena. The horses respond when people are being honest and open, Wiseman said.
“The horses are authentic, so it makes people be more authentic,” she said. The goats are not officially therapy animals, “but they make people feel good,” she said, while Wiseman’s dogs help her with her patients in the office.
Animals, particularly horses and dogs, are intuitive. In one of Wiseman’s sessions with a mother and son, the family had come to Red Skye to help the son cope with his illness. But during the session, the horse came up behind the mom and put its head on her chest and she burst out into tears, admitting she was the one that was actually having a hard time, Wiseman said.
“When someone is in distress, whether it’s sad, angry, whatever, (horses) catch on immediately to whatever your emotional state is,” Wiseman said.
Dogs also seem to be able to sense the underlying emotions of people. Wiseman had a dog that would sit at a patient’s feet just when they were lying and would catch when a patient was about to cry or get upset and jump up into their laps, she said.
Guinea pigs, goats, cats, mini-horses, mini-pigs, rabbits, birds, llamas/alpacas and domesticated rats are all used as therapy and emotional support animals in places including senior living facilities, veterans homes, schools, hospitals, hospices and in private practice.
Animals are used in these settings to calm patients, facilitate conversations in therapy, motivate recovery patients in the ICU and act as an emotional support for people suffering from a disease. Experts say there is no end to the ways animals can help humans.
For one, interacting with an animal increases mental stimulation, assisting in recall of memories and helping sequence temporal events in patients with head injuries or chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, according to UCLA Health research.
And a study on animal assisted therapy intervention found that the presence of animals can decrease the agitated behaviors and increase the social interactions of persons with dementia, according to a 2003 study in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias.
When Boone visited with the Hospice patients, one notable change occurred in that they started recalling distinct memories from as far back as childhood and without prompting, reminisced with the handlers about past pets.
Boone’s visit was special for one Hospice patient, Lois Hammond. Immediately when Hammond started interacting with Boone, she recalled the five great Danes she used to own and all the dogs she’s had throughout her life. Entering Hospice, though, she had to give them up because she and her husband couldn’t care for them anymore.
“It’s hard when you’ve lived with one all your life not to have one here,” Hammond said during the visit. But she was all smiles and laughter when Boone was around and said she looks forward to the dog visits, even if it lasts only five minutes. “As long as I get to see them, it makes a difference. I just love them.”
When patients see Boone, “they wake up,” Codish said. “They start talking about their own animals.” They become alert and talkative about the dogs and their own lives.
“At the Alzheimer’s residence Boone and I visit, there’s a woman who speaks and interacts rarely, according to staff,” Codish said. “Every time she sees Boone, though, she lights up. As she pets him she immediately starts telling the story of her dog Trix.” The dog had been badly mistreated and abused being with the circus, but the woman, then a young child, implored her mother to adopt Trix and he became her cherished companion throughout childhood, Codish said.
“She tells this exact same story in almost exactly the same words every time, sometimes several times, and it seems to give her inordinate pleasure every single time,” she said. “To me, that interaction alone is worth the therapy dog visit.”
One patient at Hospice who didn’t initially want a visit from Boone, brightened up and began smiling when Boone walked in and ate a treat off the patient’s hand.
“Dealing with people with chronic illness, having an animal visit changes the mundaneness of hospital stays and it brings a sense of hope and a sense of positiveness in your daily life,” Fine said.
Being with an animal also motivates people to participate in therapy and animalassisted therapy intervention may reduce suffering and help patients take an active role in their recovery, research from Johns Hopkins University says.
With animals in the room, patients build motivation to become more active because once they come it, the animals is expecting a pat or a treat and patients are encouraged to engage. In other cases, a dog may simply sit on a patient’s lap, providing a calm, affectionate presence that has been shown to improve mood and pain ratings.
“Working with therapy animals is an adjunct to typical treatments,” Latella said. “Animals can motivate clients who might not respond as effectively to traditional treatments.”
“I’ve found that people are afraid to be sick,” Codish said. “But having the dog around is a distraction, a special kind of distraction. If a human says ‘don’t worry’ it’s not the same as when a dog sticks their nose in there.”
Having animals visit hospital, they can also act as a social lubricant and makes it easy to segue into talking about other things, Fine said. “Over the years the animals have been that social catalyst, and as a consequence I’ve been able to go under the radar because the animals make (patients) feel so comfortable that they’re able to engage in more normalized manner.”
The donkeys at Red Skye—Josie, Bogo, Darma, Frannie and Angel—are used for sit-and-talk therapy, often with children and families, to help patients talk through their problems and come to therapeutic resolutions. Being with the donkeys calms and relaxes people as they sit with them, Wiseman said, and it becomes easier for the patient to talk about his or her problems.
“You can imagine how intimidating it is for an 11 or 12-year-old to see a doctor, but these guys are my secret weapon,” Wiseman said. Children and adolescents in therapy with the donkeys will relate themselves or others to the different donkeys and that helps them talk about their problems and work through it.
“It’s not different from the ideas of therapy like play therapy,” she said, in which phycologists let children play and speak through toys. “Usually you don’t do that kind of therapy with adolescents, but they don’t even realize it.”
The presence of animals can act as a catalyst in the therapy process, helping break the ice or reducing the initial resistance that might accompany therapy, because animals have a stress-reducing effect.
Studies have measured the calming effect of human interactions with animals and “animal companions such as dogs and cats are described as ‘living antidepressants’ that add to the joy of living, make us feel good, induce pleasant sensations, and relieve general stress,” according to a study published in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly that analyzed riders’ bonds with their horses and the therapeutic effect of riding.