May 1, 2008

How Reporter and Mutt Became a Therapy Team

by Sharon L. Peters (USA Today)

Buzzy's Comment

With patience almost anything is possible!

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He's sensitive and people-focused, one of those hyper-observant sorts who seems to notice the invisible threads that knot people up.

Timid child approaching? He drops to his belly while she hangs back to study him, and there he stays, still as a statue, until some signal undetectable to me passes between them and she's ready to make friends. The lady down the street in a wheelchair? He's as gentle as dew on a petal in his greeting.

Lovely qualities all.

But there's more, of course. Jasper, 4 1⁄2, is an Australian shepherd/border collie mix (more or less; the genetics thing is cloudy) with the predictably imprinted energy, athleticism, stimulation-need and yen to round things up and press them into manageable clusters.

Also fine qualities. Though not necessarily ideal for all settings.

Soon after I adopted him from a rescue group (when he was 1 1/2 years old), for example, I returned home to find him atop the refrigerator. There being nothing to herd or eat up there, I can only assume he plotted the trek to the top (chair to sideboard to fridge) for his own amusement. He possesses admirable focus, but, truth be known, only when it's leveled at a chattering squirrel or squawking crow. And then there's that matter of the joyful mid-stride body-reversing flips he performs at the end of the leash when he sniffs something exciting in the wind that may require his attention.

Jasper is nothing if not multi-dimensional.

Given this stew of characteristics and idiosyncracies, would he be able to cut the mustard as a therapy dog, a job that draws on his over-arching characteristic — a loving nature — but also demands he remain highly obedient, calm and unfailingly predictable in situations that can get chaotic in seconds?

I'd wondered for some time. Finally, when I began to research the pet therapy story, I decided it was time for answers.

Denver Pet Partners, which conducts four sessions a year to prepare would-be pet—therapy teams, offers pre-screenings to establish up front whether the people and pets appear to be viable candidates for this kind of volunteer work. Jasper — who's been through obedience training with me and lives to please — sailed through with reasonable ease (notwithstanding a few suggestions about matters requiring additional dog-training attention). So I plopped down my $150, which covers two days of classroom instruction for the handlers (dogs stay home) and an evaluation two weeks later of the person/dog team, and we forged ahead.

Two-day mid-March class: 24 dog owners embark on 16 hours of discussions and demonstrations relating to the thousands of details one must know before engaging in what are called "visits" with ailing, recovering, troubled, needy or in-need-of-comfort clients: how to keep them and our own dogs safe in hospitals, hospices, classrooms and rehab centers; how to read early signals that the dog is stressed and what to do; preparation for the scores of unexpected circumstances that require proactive handling; details of client confidentiality law; rules about grooming (for pet and person) and behavior (same thing).

The participants include people in their 20s up to recent retirees, and folks from all walks of life — therapists, a retired firefighter, an ex-teacher, an advertising copy writer — who own all manner of dogs, from the expected assortment of labs and golden retrievers to a Westminster Dog Show-like constellation of purebreds (an Airedale, greater Swiss mountain dog, Portugese water dog, great Pyrenees, pomeranian and German shepherds) to a handful mixed-breed and mystery-breed mutts. A prevailing similarity among the humans: They're all besotted with their dogs; most carry photos of them and one brings an 8-by-10 portrait of hers.

The weekend's tone is serious. Done properly, such visits can bring incalculable benefit to clients; done imperfectly, things can go amok.

Since so much hinges on the dog's behavior, there's extended discussion about the upcoming evaluation that will judge the dogs (and their owners) either ready for visits, not ready (and they can go through another eval after more practice) or unacceptable (because the dog clearly isn't enjoying it or the dog or owner does something awful, and then there's no second chance). We all leave determined to smooth our dogs' rough edges in the next 13 days.

For Jasper, that mostly means getting him to unfailingly pass by captivating items on the ground without feeling the need to examine them, and growing accustomed to walking placidly through unfamiliar buildings. On this latter, I realize that like most high-energy Colorado dogs, he is able to keep his composure in any outdoors situation or encounter — boulder fields, creek crossings over logs, pack llamas on the trails, coyotes, racing rapids and crowds of tourists in hideous shorts. But he's never strolled through any building that doesn't belong to me or a buddy, so he tends to be excessively curious, wanting to explore everything. We practice. Endlessly.

April Evaluation Day: We all arrive for our individual 30 minutes in the spotlight with the sort of edginess a parent feels at a kid's first ballet recital. Each dog must respond to basic commands — sit, down, stay (for quite a long time) — and walk unerringly on a loose-leash around a cone course. Each must submit cheerfully to foot and teeth exams and brushing, and accept an awkward hug and an accidental bump from a stranger. And each must wait patiently on the leash while the owner greets one stranger, and then another who's walking a dog. The owner and dog must thread their way through a crowd of chattering people with canes and walkers and not come unglued when there's a loud, unexpected noise. And they must pass by, on command, a very appealing item on the floor.

That latter was a big, fuzzy stuffed bird of excrutiating attractiveness. And it almost proved Jasper's undoing. But he recovered just in time and walked on.

There were a couple of things in our performance that were less than perfect, but when the scoring was complete, we passed! As did 13 others of the 21 from my class who opted to evaluate this month. That, by the way, was an unusually low acceptance rate. Most will try again later.

Soon Jasper can don the forest green therapy-dog vest and apply his empathy to a larger audience.

Not bad for a probable puppy-mill dog, an impulse buy at a Denver pet store by the wife in a floundering marriage who took him home to a houseful of dogs and puppies and soon departed forever. Jasper got no training and little attention, and he burned off his inherent need for high-energy activity by systematically dismembering sofas. Little else is known about his life back then, though he was likely treated very roughly, given his tendency for months after I got him to drop to a submissive posture when anyone spoke above a whisper, and his habit of urinating all over the feet and ankles of the people he'd approach hopefully but apprehensively, fearful of how they'd respond.

I'm going to try to get us hooked up to do our visits at a domestic abuse shelter. I figure he — and they, in time — will understand that with time and love, almost anything is possible.