Maggie first got her paws wet as a canine counselor in 1983, when she accompanied her owner, Judy Belluomini, to Hynes Elementary School to help stage a Special Education Olympics program. Maggie developed such rapport with the kids, one of the teachers suggested she visit a severely disturbed boy. Her presence calmed the boy and stopped his self-abusive behavior. The gentle collie soothed the children and listened sympathetically to the troubles they couldn't express to human adults.
Maggie died in 1990, but her work with mentally disturbed children was continued by six counseling collies who visit the children regularly and, true to their herding heritage, gently bring them back to the human fold when they are lost in emotional turmoil.
As organizations such as the Delta Society have long known, animals make wonderful therapists. The Society's Pet Partners program is one of many groups that teams people and pets for companionship and therapy. Pet Partner therapists include a variety of species - dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, guinea pigs, and more - who visit nursing homes, hospitals, schools, prisons, and treatment facilities with their human companions, giving their time to people in need. In the past few decades, hundreds of local, grassroots organizations have cropped up to bring therapeutic pets and people in need together. A spokesperson for one Philadelphia-area residence facility thanked the Pals for Life volunteers who visited them weekly for "the miles of smiles [they] put on our residents' faces and in their hearts. Animals have a way of easing the pain if only a little bit."
Animals have branched out into all fields of human "rescue" work. Horses have a special talent for physical therapy, in programs like those of Sebastian Riding Academy and the Thorncroft Equestrian Center. Riding therapy has helped rehabilitate victims of serious injuries, cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis, restoring their independence and self-confidence. For the mentally retarded as well as physically impaired, there's nothing like bonding with a horse and mastering the art of riding to build new confidence and open a world of possibilities for achievement.
A highlight of the world-renowned Devon Horse Show for more than 20 years has been a Handicapped Riders Event, cosponsored by Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital, Thorncroft Equestrian Riding Center, and Brushwood Stables. Scores of competitors come to participate, with the winners riding at Devon, but most participants feel like winners for just being there. Jayne Buckley, one first-time rider during the last year I attended the event, had been so devastated by multiple sclerosis just a few months earlier she couldn't talk, walk, or even eat without help. But after she left the ring, she was able to go home to take care of her two kids.
Dolphins have had dramatic results with autistic children and people with severe disabilities who couldn't be reached by conventional therapies. "Swimming with dolphin" programs have become so popular for their apparent therapeutic effect, many marine biologists who study them are concerned over the possible stress to the gentle sea mammals.
Some progressive prison programs that allow inmates to train service dogs, however, are richly rewarding everyone involved. The dogs are recruited from shelters, where their chance of adoption and survival is slim. The prisoners not only learn a valuable, marketable skill of dog training, they also have the opportunity to form deep bonds with the dogs in the process. Many are experiencing the joy of knowing they're having a positive impact on society and helping someone who needs them. In the end, the disabled people get a well-socialized and trained animal assistant. Even the prisons benefit from the "humanizing" effect of the dogs among the inmates.
Introducing animals in institutions for emotionally disturbed children and juvenile delinquents has helped the kids accept responsibility for another living being and care about something outside themselves - sometimes for the first time in their lives. The pets' presence also helps them deal with some of the pressures that originally drove them to drugs or violent, antisocial behavior.
At the Lima State Institution for the criminally insane, for example, the attempted suicide rate among the inmates was about 85 percent. In six sections of the facility where the men were allowed to keep pets, though, not a single attempted suicide was recorded.
Dogs are still the best-known therapists, working as service animals for the disabled, Seeing Eye and Hearing Ear dogs. A natural extension of their therapeutic work has taken them into the field of psychology where canine co-therapists make it easier for troubled patients to open up and learn to trust. Alpha Bits, a therapy pet newsletter, described the work of Humphrey, a black poodle mix, Amos and Troll, yellow Labrador, and Tess, a Bouvier des Flandres, in Dr. Joel Gavriele-Gold's psychology office. Troll was a "fine diagnostician" who could sense a paranoid patient, and all the dogs, according to Dr. Gavriele-Gold, were sensitive, intuitive, and nonjudgmental with their patients. They provided comfort and warmth at just the right times, and served as confidants, especially to disturbed children who could tell them their most secret feelings.
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