It’s so ubiquitous that it could almost be considered a trend: people constantly accompanied by their dogs, branded as ‘therapy dogs.’ By design, these therapy dogs are there to help people who would otherwise have problems in social situations. Some view this as a long-overdue step in helping people overcome difficulties to lead richer, more complete lives. Others, however, balk at the idea and question its legitimate, scientific merit.
To help shed some light on this situation, we spoke with Lilly Pritchard of Positive Force Dog Training. Pritchard is an MFT Trainee who’s certified in training & counseling, a certified professional dog trainer, and someone who has worked extensively with Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT). She agreed to explain the upsides and some of the downsides of using animals (dogs, specifically) to help certain patients better connect with the world around them.
How Animal-Assisted Therapy Came To Be
The founder of the movement is regarded as Elaine Smith, a nurse who noticed patients responding well to a certain golden retriever brought in for visits. In 1976, she started a program where dogs would visit medical institutions with the sole purpose of brightening up everyone’s day. While Smith certainly helped bring the practice into mainstream psychology, Prichard explains that the link between canines and therapy goes back about as far as our understanding of modern medicine.
“The earliest that I’ve read about the idea of animal assisted therapy occurring was when Florence Nightingale (often called ‘the mother of modern nursing’) wrote about noticing that pets helped to reduce anxiety in psychiatric patients, both children and adults. Later, Freud used his Chow Chow, Jofi, during psychoanalysis sessions. He noted her ability to calm patients, and thereby facilitate them opening up to him, and to attune to their emotional states, especially regarding whether they were anxious or not.”
In the early 1960s, child psychologist Boris Levinson realized the benefit of therapy animals when he left his dog with one of his more difficult child patients. When he returned, he found the patient talking to the dog. “Levinson was the first to give a formal talk to the American Psychological Association (APA) regarding AAT. Although he wasn’t taken very seriously until information regarding Freud’s work with Jofi came to light,” says Pritchard.
Pritchard calls the last 10-15 years a time of “exponential growth” for the practice of AAT, thanks, in part, to its positive effects on patients.
“Generally speaking, dogs have grown in their popularity as pets over the last several decades, so more people are aware of the positive benefits of having contact with dogs. But we’ve also seen an explosion in research in the field of canine cognition and canine anthro-zoology in the last 15 years; including more research regarding the positive effects of AAT.”
It’s been documented that a dog in your life can have numerous health benefits, and studies that date back to the early 1980s show how they’ve had a positive effect on everything from reducing blood pressure to living longer after a heart attack.
“On a human level, anyone who has had the experience of receiving AAT from a dog, or even being around when AAT dogs are working, has felt and witnessed that deep bond we have, a bond that has been forged over at least 15,000 years of co-evolution,” says Pritchard. “The emotional interactions between dogs and humans are deeply healing and feel nothing short of magical. ”
With AAT — as with so many forms of therapy — people often need to see the proof in the pudding. “I think anyone who has experienced this inevitably becomes an advocate for AAT on some level,” Pritchard says. “Whether it’s simply telling another person about their experience or some other, more active form of advocacy.”
She also points out that it helps that most AAT programs are volunteer based, which keeps the costs low, enticing more facilities to take part. Non-profit organizations like Pet Partners or Intermountain Therapy Animals have worked to help match potential therapy dogs to the communities around them.
Speculation And Skepticism
With all these benefits and increasing popularity, the use of therapy dogs is still not as universally recognized as one might expect. Pritchard speculates that there are concerns over hygiene, which does play a factor in why certain facilities are hesitant to try AAT.
Not to mention that not everyone likes dogs, and not everyone feels safe around them. “There has to be a way within a facility for the therapy dogs to navigate around these clients in a way that respects their boundaries. Some facilities may find this too difficult and may choose not to have AAT as a result,” Pritchard explains.
There’s also the issue that AAT has, as a whole, not been completely accepted as beneficial psychological practice. It’s a sentiment that Pritchard sees as multi-faceted.
“Some of this is the result of a bias against anything that isn’t the orthodoxy,” she says. “Some is due to balking at the idea of a non-human animal seeming to fill a roll of what should only be the purview of an educated, trained professional. Some of the skepticism has been because, until recently, there simply wasn’t enough research to back up the claims being made by AAT’s proponents.”
There’s also some reservation over the certification (or lack thereof) when it comes to the therapy animals themselves. Seeing-eye dogs or other specialized assistance animals are trained rigorously to meet the needs of the people they’ll be assisting. Therapy animals, on the other hand, aren’t. This lack of formal training causes doubts about AAT, because, as Pritchard puts it, “the dogs aren’t doing anything in the way that service dogs [do].”
“I think there are some clients out there who get their pet dogs certified as emotional support animals (ESAs) but whose pets are not actually particularly well suited for the work,” says Pritchard. “[These] dogs are too stressed, too reactive, perhaps even too aggressive to be out in public that much. There is some public perception that people are using their psychological problems as an excuse to take their pets with them everywhere, no matter the pet’s temperament. There is some truth to these concerns, but I also think the concerns tend to be out of proportion with the problem.”
Along with casting doubt on the legitimacy of the therapy animals, there are other issues that hinder the movement, notably the omnipresence of pharmaceuticals that are generally prescribed for social and emotional disorders. While Pritchard believes that drugs can be a vital part of treatment, “thinking about mental illness as only a chemical imbalance or brain disorder to be treated with medication doesn’t lend itself to thinking about treatments such as AAT.”
How AAT Helps Patients
Still, despite these hurdles, Pritchard gets to see the benefits of AAT first hand. “Generally, whenever I’ve gone into facilities with my dogs, peoples’ affect often changes from flat or even shut down to joyful and engaged, even upon first seeing the dog. I can see how they are longing for engagement with another being — for touch and for the unconditional love that a dog can give. I think there is something about making loving contact with dogs that reminds us of our own humanity.”
Just the presence of a dog can help break down defenses and build trust between doctors and patients, something Pritchard says happens to her regularly. “As my dog and I are sitting next to someone in a psychiatric or eldercare facility, and as the person is petting the dog, they will start to share their stories with me. Some of these stories are happy memories, some are bittersweet, and some are hard or traumatic, but they are all raw and real. There is something about the presence of a dog that allows them to trust, to feel safe, and to open up, just like Freud discovered nearly 90 years ago.”
Accounts like these speak to the very heart of AAT, the idea that the right animal can help someone overcome their problems. For people who feel isolated or alone, the demeanor of a dog can help alleviate those problems. “The dogs don’t care what you look like or what your diagnosis is, they just want to be near you and to be pet by you, and the clients can feel that,” explains Pritchard. “When someone is starved for connection, or perhaps is even scared to interact with other humans, the dog is a perfect bridge to reconnecting with the world because the dog wants nothing more than to just be with you and to be in the moment.”
With benefits of a dog’s demeanor showing positive results, therapy dogs have found themselves in more and more mainstream medical settings. For example, The Mayo Clinic offers a therapy dog option, and CRC health, the country’s largest provider of behavior health services, also champions the benefits of AAT.
Pritchard sees the upward trend of AAT as a positive, one that will allow it to become a more common practice. “Animals can connect us with the youthful, playful parts of ourselves and with other memories that we have left buried. I think dogs also give us a sense of connection with the natural world, which I think humans need to have a sense of.”
