Web Version of my Presentation for NAMI
 (National Alliance on Mental Illness)
12/11/24
page 2

Part 3  
History of animals being used as therapy 
 

The following are quotes from an excellent book, Volunteering with Your Pet, by Mary R. Burch, Ph.D.

In 900 BC Homer wrote about the god of healing, who used a sacred dog to accomplish the healing of people.

The first known example of a special relationship between a dog and a blind person was depicted in a first-century AD mural in the ruins of Roman Herculaneum3.

1780 The first systematic attempt to train dogs to aid blind people began at ‘Les Quinze-Vingts’ hospital for the blind in Paris. 

In the 1790’s at York Hospital, Yorkshire, England, a treatment center for people with mental illness, the Quakers utilized Pet Assisted Therapy.

In 1859 Florence Nightingale wrote that a small pet is an excellent companion for the sick.

1914-1918  The modern guide dog story begins during the First World War, with thousands of soldiers returning from the Front blinded, often by poison gas. A German doctor, Dr Gerhard Stalling, got the idea of training dogs en masse to help those affected. While walking with a patient one day through the hospital grounds, he was called away urgently and left his dog with the patient as company. When he returned, he saw signs, from the way the dog was behaving, that it was looking after the blind patient.

Dr. Stalling started to explore ways of training dogs to become reliable guides and in August 1916 opened the world’s first guide dog school for the blind in Oldenburg. The school grew and many new branches opened in other German cities, training up to 600 dogs a year. These schools provided dogs not only to ex-servicemen, but also to blind people in Britain, France, Spain, Italy, the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union.

In 1919 animals were used in St. Elizabeth Hospital, Washington, C.D., for men with mental problems.

In 1926, a large guide dog training center had opened in Potsdam, near Berlin, which was proving to be highly successful. This school’s work broke new ground in the training of guide dogs and it was capable of accommodating around 100 dogs at a time and providing up to 12 fully-trained guide dogs a month.

Late 1920s  Around this time, a wealthy American woman, Dorothy Harrison Eustis, was already training dogs for the army, police and customs service in Switzerland. Having heard about the Potsdam center, Eustis was curious to study the school’s methods and spent several months there. She came away so impressed that she wrote an article about it for the Saturday Evening Post in America in October 1927.

1927 A blind American man, Morris Frank, heard about the article and bought a copy of the newspaper. He later said that the five cents the newspaper cost him “bought an article that was worth more than a million dollars to me. It changed my life”.  He wrote to Eustis, telling her that he would very much like to help introduce guide dogs to the United States.

1929 Taking up the challenge, Dorothy Eustis trained a dog, Buddy, and brought Frank over to Switzerland to learn how to work with the dog. She called the school in Switzerland, like the one a year later in New Jersey, ‘L’Oeil qui Voit’, or The Seeing Eye (the name comes from the Old Testament of the Bible, Proverbs 20:12 – ‘the hearing ear and the seeing eye’).  Frank went back to the United States with what many believe to be America’s first guide dog. Eustis later established the Seeing Eye School in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1929.  It, and the two she established Switzerland and Italy, were the first guide dog schools of the modern era that have survived the test of time.  Since then, guide dog schools have opened all round the world, and more open their doors every decade, continuing to work for the increased mobility, dignity and independence of blind and partially-sighted people the world over.

In the 1940’s the Red Cross, working with people with war injuries, had them work on a farm, with animals, to help them forget and recover from their injuries.

Also in the 1940’s, a Yorkshire Terrier named Smoky became famous as a therapy dog serving soldiers during World War II.

In the 1950’s, clinical psychologist Dr. Boris Levinson, at Yeshiva University in NY, had his dog, Jingles, attend therapy sessions with a disturbed child.

1976 to today  Various organizations exist to foster pet assisted therapy.  Therapy Dogs International was founded in 1976.  Therapy Dogs Incorporated (now Alliance of Therapy Dogs) was founded in 1990.

Jack Butrick, co-founder of Therapy Dogs Incorporated (now Alliance of Therapy Dogs), was using animals to teach measurable goals and objectives (commonplace now but unheard of then), when most people were excited about simply visiting with animals.

Personal Dates

1980-1981  I read an article in a national dog magazine (Dog Fancy or Dog World) about dogs visiting nursing homes.  I called the only nursing home in town (Eventide, now Big Horn Rehab & Care) and asked if they would like a dog to visit.  They did, and I began visiting with my German Shepherds.

1989 Westview Healthcare Center was built and I began visiting there also. 

1995  I heard about Therapy Dogs Inc (now Alliance of Therapy Dogs) and had my dogs certified as official therapy dogs through them.  I also became a tester/observer for them, which means I test local teams who want to become therapy dogs.

December, 2015 – May 2018.  My dogs and I began a Reading Dog program at the library.  We went Fridays, while other teams went Mondays and Wednesdays.

September 2018  I began going to Sheridan Manor two days a week.  On Wednesdays, I spent at least an hour in the enclosed Alzheimer’s Unit.  The residents there completely stole my heart.  It was a beautifully peaceful time, slow-paced and generally pretty quiet as my therapy dog went from one person to the next for prolonged petting.  Quiet except for the laughter, I should say, because the dogs’ antics energized them to laugh and comment.  One of the things that typifies therapy dog work is making connections – bringing people out of themselves, inducing them to talk to others and share the joy of the visit.  The  unit’s activity person and I put our heads together and came up with the idea to create posters for each dog.  We created two for each dog (“GloryToo Is Visiting Today”), including lots of photos and a listing of their parents and their litters if I had bred them, what they liked to do and a silly quirk they had.  The activity person would put the poster up in the morning of the day that that dog was coming.  The residents who were still able to read would study the poster and ask questions or comment about something on the poster. Sometime before my visit that afternoon, they did a group activity where one who could read would read parts of the poster info and the activity person would ask people questions about what had been read. They were primed to visit when we arrived.

April, 2019 – March 2020  Therapy dogs began going to Tongue River Elementary in Ranchester on Mondays and Thursdays, finishing that school year and beginning the next.  We created stationary for each dog and all children in the school were invited to write the therapy dogs, who wrote back.  We also provided posters for all the dogs and the school would post them where the kids could see who was coming that day.  When the pandemic hit, the children continued writing to the therapy dogs, who continued to reply.  In September 2020, we once again began going to the school, though the other two therapy dog handlers quit due to health issues, so it was only me. 

September 2019 – March 2020  My therapy dogs and I went to Tongue River High School in Dayton, working with a remedial reading class for high school students.  I alternated on Mondays between TRE and TRHS.  On the Mondays I went to TRHS, a different team did TRE.  Then covid shut everything down…

September 2020  I once again began going to Tongue River Elementary. The other two therapy dog handlers quit due to health issues.  I created trading cards for each Reading Dog.  The children received on each time they read to the dog.  They also received one in each letter replying to a letter they wrote a therapy dog.

January, 2021  I began doing Reading Dog with the kindergarteners at Holy Name School every Thursday morning.

February, 2024  My therapy dogs and I began visiting Green House Living.

August 2024 I had special shirts made for each of my therapy dogs to wear during winter-time therapy dog visits.  Each shirt has a head shot and the dog’s name on front, and an action shot on the back.

October 2024  Therapy Dogs were asked to offer comfort to the crews fighting the local wildfire.

From my page:  https://celhaus.com/other-gsd-activities/therapy-dogs/

One afternoon when I entered the Alzheimer’s Unit, I saw a new resident.  He was very sad, nonverbal and withdrawn.  Until he saw Spirit, that is!  He lit up and shuffled towards us, breaking into a smile.  Spirit ignored everyone else and pulled me to meet him halfwa,y then sat pressing against his side.  He bent down to pet her and then looked up at me and said something. The activity person, nurse and CNAs were crying.  I found out after the visit that he had come in 6 days before, hated being there and refused to talk or communicate with anyone.  The next week when I returned with a therapy dog, he was a totally different person. The staff said he had continued opening up after our visit, that we had unlocked the door to his heart.  He went on to become quite the jokester, a really fun guy.

Study finds interactions with dogs can increase brainwaves associated with stress relief and heightened concentration (msn.com)
 Playing with dogs helps people concentrate and relax, brain recordings show (msn.com)
 

Part 4  
Dr. Lynch’s research discovering how having animals in our lives can reverse the damage caused by loneliness.

I highlighted items I wanted to emphasize during my talk, and I left those parts highlighted in this web version of my notes.
 Stories of my therapy dog visits, and some quotes, are italicized.

Dr. Lynch dramatically observed the health effects that animals offer to humans when he was filming a “Sixty Minutes” documentary about the health benefits of animal companions with Harry Reasoner.  The film crew came to his home, and they filmed as he monitored his 10-year-old daughter’s blood pressure as she sat quietly and then read aloud (remember, blood pressure can rise dramatically when a person speaks).  Then they placed her beloved dog, a rescued Schnauzer mix named “Rags,” on her lap.  Dr. Lynch was astounded when her blood pressure dropped 50%.

In the following 20 years, Dr. Lynch researched blood pressure and heart problems.  It took him that long to understand what he had seen during the filming and led him to understand and appreciate what Rags had given his daughter, and to articulate it as the “physiology of inclusion” mentioned earlier.  Fifteen or twenty years before that, he had observed the same type of response from dogs studied in a laboratory at John Hopkin Medical School.  As soon as human beings petted the dogs, they too would react with highly significant reductions in their blood pressure.  That type of blood pressure response was also recorded in interactions with horses and other species of animals.  It took another 20 years for researchers to recognize that very similar reactions occurred in human beings when they petted their animals. Animals reacted to touch, and human beings as well, in very powerful ways. 

Here’s a story from this summer:
‘Varoom! had just been certified as a therapy dog.  On one of her first visits, she amazed me and had staff members and I in tears.  I won’t take therapy dogs on visits if the temperature is over 90 degrees because they can burn their pads on the asphalt as they go into or out of the nursing home.  When possible, I’ll do visits in the morning instead.  At this particular nursing home, they play bingo every day at 10 a.m.  Some of the people who love the dog visits are also avid bingo players, so I usually end my visit with a quick hello in the bingo room.  On this particular day, Varoom! made a beeline towards a gentleman who was one of my favorites.  His face lit up and he put down his bingo markers ad reached for her.  She then moved to his side and snuggled against his wheelchair, pressing her cheek on his upper arm.  He winced, and I asked if she had hurt him.  He replied no, but went on to say that his arm was really hurting that morning, right where she laid her head.  She had sensed his pain and moved to comfort him.’  I have often seen my therapy dogs do this.”

Lynch makes an essential contribution both accessible and constructive.  He stresses how educators, parents and policy-makers must change their communication with children if they want to prevent future tragedies on a massive scale.  He admonishes all of us, whether single, married, divorced or widowed, that exercises to improve our communicative health must be undertaken with the same seriousness and commitment as our aerobic exertions.  And he emphasizes how healthy dialogue must come to be seen as the key to a healthier, happier existence for all humankind. 

Dr. Lynch, Dr. Aaron Katcher and colleagues conducted a study as part of an effort to develop clinical approaches to help effectively counteract the devastating health toll exacted by human loneliness.  In that study, they uncovered the powerful influence that pet animals have on the long-term survival of heart patients released from a University Coronary Care Unit.  The most potent factor influencing long-term survival was the physical damage to the heart from the attack.  But they were surprised by the second-most factor:  heart patients who had pets had a far better chance of living than those who did not. 

In 1978, they acquired one of the first computerized devices that automatically measured blood pressure and heart rate.  No longer did a patient have to remain totally still to have those rates monitored by stethoscope and mercury manometer.  They quickly discovered that a person begins to talk, there is an immediate rise in blood pressure, and when they are quiet once again, there is an immediate drop in blood pressure.  Eventually they realized that people who had the most difficulty in communicating openly and honestly (as measured in blood pressure surges) were most likely to become isolated and lonely, withdraw from communication and social interactions and end up in a vicious, downwardly- spiraling cycle of events that led to ever-increasing stress, isolation and ultimately premature death.  He gradually realized that many instances of premature disease could be the result of a breakdown in dialogue and communication due to a failure to reveal or decode the language of one’s own heart or the hearts of others.  That research resulted in Dr. Lynch’s book, The Language of the Heart:  The Human Body in Dialogue (Basic Books, 1985).

Dr. Aaron Katcher conducted a remarkably simple experiment.  He had volunteers practice a variety of meditation techniques in order to ascertain which method was most effective in helping a person lower their blood pressure.  He then compared these techniques against the simple assignment of having a person gaze at fish swimming in a tank.  He observed that simply gazing or focusing one’s attention on a tropical fish moving about in a fish tank was far more effective in lowering blood pressure than any of the more traditional meditation techniques.  The evidence was becoming overwhelming.  Blood pressure falls when people silently attend to the living world outside the confines of their own skin.  Animals and the way we interact with the rest of the natural world have a truly profound effect on our hearts and blood vessels. 

 

Part 5
Benefits of having a dog

Boosts Your Physical Activity – walking the dog, other activities

Reduces Stress Levels – Their calm, loving presence is a gentle reminder to take things a bit easier and enjoy life’s simple moments.

Provides Unconditional Love and Companionship – dogs don’t judge; they offer support and comfort that can lift your spirits instantly

Enhances Social Life – dogs are attention magnets and act as ice breakers, providing an easy topic of conversation

Teaches Responsibility – instills a sense of accountability and discipline, as well as an understanding of what it means to care for another living being.

Improves Mental Health – Dogs are excellent emotional support animals. Their mere presence can help alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety. Caring for a dog provides purpose and can boost self-esteem, especially during difficult times. The routine of taking care of a dog gives structure to the day, which can be particularly helpful for individuals struggling with mental health issues. Additionally, the companionship of a dog provides a sense of stability, helping people feel more grounded and positive.

Offers a Sense of Security  You aren’t alone or vulnerable to danger.

Enhances Emotional Intelligence – Having a dog requires tuning into their needs and understanding their body language, which in turn helps enhance emotional intelligence. Dogs communicate through subtle cues, teaching their owners to be more observant and empathetic. This skill is especially beneficial for children, who can develop a greater sense of empathy and compassion by understanding and responding to their dog’s emotions. Emotional intelligence gained through interacting with dogs often helps people navigate human relationships with more sensitivity and care.

Encourages Outdoor Exploration – outdoor adventures not only boost physical health but also provide mental relaxation and a break from the usual routine. Dogs make it easy to incorporate more nature into daily life, leading to a healthier, more balanced lifestyle.

Provides Entertainment – Dogs have a way of bringing laughter and joy with their playful antics and unique personalities. Their joyful nature is contagious, and their ability to make us laugh is just one of the many ways they make life more enjoyable.

My young dog, Justice, is quite silly at times.  The week before Halloween, our local therapy dogs were called to give stress relief to the fire crews fighting our massive wildfire.  I had the dogs wear Halloween costumes.  It was the first time that Justice had worn a costume.  He was dressed as a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  The costume had two tiny legs sewed onto the costume by the dog’s shoulder.  He didn’t like those flopping arms and, on the way from the car to where the crew was, kept turning and biting at them, first on one side and then the other.  Once we engaged with the firefighters, it took him about 5 minutes to realize that the costume was getting him a lot of attention. I, of course, first assured them that he wouldn’t be breathing fire and that brought a lot of laughs and people would quit what they were doing to come make a fuss over him.  He was in heaven with all the attention and I swear he would wiggle to make those tiny arms flop so people would laugh and pet him more.

 

Aids in Child Development – Dogs help children
develop empathy, patience, and a sense of responsibility;
learn to respect other living beings and often become more caring and nurturing;
by offering a non-judgmental friend to confide in;
build social skills, as children learn how to communicate and interact with their furry companions.

Encourages Routine and Structure – Dogs thrive on routine, which encourages their owners to stick to a consistent schedule.   From morning walks to regular feeding times, a dog’s needs help create a structure for the day. This routine can be beneficial, especially for those who struggle with time management or lack a daily rhythm. A dog’s routine can provide stability and order, making it easier for owners to plan their days and prioritize tasks. This structured schedule can also have a positive impact on productivity and overall well-being.

Helps You Live in the Moment – Dogs have a unique way of living entirely in the present, which can serve as a reminder to their owners to appreciate the here and now; slow down, savor the little things, and find gratitude in daily life.  Dogs are constant reminders to enjoy life’s simple pleasures.

Reduces Feelings of Loneliness – For those who live alone or spend a lot of time by themselves, a dog can be a constant source of companionship. Dogs provide emotional support and companionship, filling the home with warmth and affection. Their presence can alleviate feelings of loneliness and provide a sense of purpose. Dogs are always there to keep you company, making even the quietest days feel less empty. Whether it’s a snuggle on the couch or a loyal companion by your side, dogs make sure you never feel alone.

Teaches the Importance of Self Care – Caring for a dog involves maintaining their health and well-being, which often reminds owners to take better care of themselves too. A dog’s needs, like regular exercise and a balanced diet, can inspire owners to adopt healthier habits. The time spent walking or playing with a dog becomes an opportunity to engage in self-care and improve one’s physical health. By prioritizing a dog’s wellness, owners often become more mindful of their health, making self-care a shared journey with their furry friend.

Reduces Feelings of Loneliness – For those who live alone or spend a lot of time by themselves, a dog can be a constant source of companionship. Dogs provide emotional support and companionship, filling the home with warmth and affection. Their presence can alleviate feelings of loneliness and provide a sense of purpose. Dogs are always there to keep you company, making even the quietest days feel less empty. Whether it’s a snuggle on the couch or a loyal companion by your side, dogs make sure you never feel alone.

Teaches the Importance of Self Care – Caring for a dog involves maintaining their health and well-being, which often reminds owners to take better care of themselves too. A dog’s needs, like regular exercise and a balanced diet, can inspire owners to adopt healthier habits.

back to page 1 (Parts 1 – 2)
to page 3 (Part 6: Therapy Dogs, including Dr. Lynch’s research about the health damages of toxic talk and school failure in a child’s life)
to page 4 (Part 7, Service Dogs)
 to page 5 (Part 8, Emotional Assistance Animals)