Everyone knows “dogs are man’s best friend,” but research in recent years has shown our furry friends are much more than cute companions.
The Cleveland Clinic reported in 2020 on several studies showing that pets can reduce levels of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Dogs specifically contribute additional health benefits when they motivate their owners to walk them, and outdoor exercise has been proven to boost brain health (along with many other health benefits). And just last month, the University of Pittsburgh published a study that found interacting with dogs stimulates cognitive and emotional brain activity.
The advantages dogs bring to the lives of humans are well-known to several local organizations that use dogs to enhance therapy sessions and to ease trauma, grief and stress. Following are the stories of some of those organizations and their four-legged wonders.
A Journey to You Professional Counseling Services
Keona is a near-constant presence at A Journey to You Professional Counseling Services in State College. Owner/founder/Executive Director Bethanne Fetzer says Keona, like other therapy dogs, “lowers anxiety to help clients relax, provides comfort, lowers blood pressure, reduces loneliness, increases mental stimulation and can provide a happy distraction.”
Fetzer’s decision to try a therapy dog in her work was based on feedback from clients.
“When I was first in private practice as a solo practitioner, my clients talked a lot about their dogs providing them comfort,” she says. “I would tell them for our next session to bring their dog in with them. Those who did, I was able to see a significant difference in their mood and demeanor within the therapy session. When I opened the group practice, I decided that a therapy dog on staff could potentially help all clients in this way!”
Keona came to A Journey to You in 2014 at 12 weeks old for the purpose of working at the office.
“She is my dog and comes home with me every evening and drives to work with me every morning,” says Fetzer. “She greets clients as they come through the door and hangs out with them in the waiting room. She also makes her ‘rounds’ during the therapy hour by way of scratching with her paw on each door one time. If the door does not open for her, then she knows to walk away and that she is not needed and will move on to the next door.
“She can sense when clients are in distress and will often sit in front of them and place a paw gently on their lap, place her head on their lap, or just lean on their legs or lie on or at their feet. She is one loving special being! Not a mean bone in her body. Children have already tried to pry bones out of her mouth and lay on top of her, and she has never even growled at them once.”
Keona does indeed seem to be something of a baby-whisperer.
“One of my fondest memories of Keona was when there was an infant in the waiting room who was in a car seat,” Fetzer recalls. “Another client came in with a very energetic five-year-old child. The child was jumping all around the waiting room and when Keona saw this, she immediately walked over to the infant and sat right in front of her seat as if to protect the infant from getting accidentally trampled on. Everyone witnessed it and was in complete awe of the situation.
“Keona is Hawaiian and means ‘God’s greatest gift,’” Fetzer adds. “She was typecast for this role!”
Koch Funeral Home
Karen Keller, a retired schoolteacher, has been involved in Therapy Dog International for years. Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, she regularly visited schools and nursing home residents with her dog. This year, Koch Funeral Home got in touch with Therapy Dogs International, who got in touch with Keller, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Keller wasn’t sure how her Australian shepherd Monroe would do in the different setting of a funeral home, so they first tried a grief circle.
“We sat in a circle, and I introduced Monroe, and then I just let her go,” Keller says. “And she just went from person to person, and if there was a person talking, she would skip them, go on to the next person, and then go back to the person when they were no longer talking. And I’d never seen a dog work a group of people like she did. So I thought, OK, then she understands the process of grief. Let’s see what she does when there’s a dead body. So we did do that. She waited until the people addressed her and looked at her, and then she went belly up to them. I take a chair for people who can’t bend over so they can pet her.”
Keller says Monroe is “just phenomenal” as a grief therapy dog.
“That just seems to be her calling,” Keller says. “When I watched her work that circle of people—you can’t teach that. She just instinctively did it.”
Monroe and Keller go into churches, attend grief circles and are essentially on call for whatever Koch might need. Keller is not employed by Koch but says what she and Monroe do is “just a volunteer thing. It’s a way of me giving back to the community. … It’s really fulfilling to see a dog of yours do this for people. I can’t even explain it—it’s awesome. It’s just awesome. I wish more people would get involved with it because I think there is a calling for it.”
Keller has several other pups at home. But she is particularly attached to Monroe. When Koch asked if they could have Monroe full-time, she said, “She’s gotta go home to me.”
Monroe and Karen now will be spending a little more time away from home, though. After South Hills School of Business & Technology administrators read reports about the team’s work at the funeral home, they arranged for Monroe to visit campus regularly to give students some TLC.
Canine Partners for Life
Canine Partners for Life, headquartered in Cochranville, trains service and companion dogs to “increase the independence and quality of life for individuals with physical, developmental and cognitive disabilities.”
According to Kirstin Downie, CPL’s director of development and communications, “These dogs provide greater independence, joy, fulfillment, confidence, security and love” for people who have a wide range of disabilities. The dogs themselves are trained in the basics and sometimes receive additional training depending on the situation for which they’ll provide service.
Downie explains the process of training a CPL dog: “After spending the first eight weeks with their mom, most CPL puppies start their training in community homes. They stay with the community volunteers from two months until six months of age, as this is a critical time for socialization in public.
“At six months of age, all puppies go to one of the six prisons [in Pennsylvania and Maryland] participating in our Prison Puppy Raising Program. For the next eight months, inmate puppy raisers focus on training new obedience commands and service skills.
“At 14 months of age, the puppies move into the CPL kennel to start their formalized training with our professional trainers.”
CPL has been placing Courthouse Companion Dogs for a dozen years now to “provide emotional comfort and support to victims and witnesses of crime affected by the stressors of the judicial system.” Downie says this is a very important, specialized job, as “a dog must be sensitive to a person’s feelings, yet confident enough to not react to an individual’s emotional distress. Courthouse Companion Dogs have the ability to remain calm and create a sense of comfort and security.”
The bittersweet work of one Courthouse Companion Dog stands out in Downie’s mind when she’s asked about a particularly memorable time she witnessed a CPL dog in action:
“One of our Courthouse Companion Dogs, Turks, was matched with an investigator for domestic violence and sex crimes in Montgomery County. As an eight-year-old child waited in the witness room to testify against her grandfather at trial, Turks sat on the floor and let the child pet her.
“At first, the dog was just sitting with her looking to the handler. Then the handler said, ‘You’re here today to help this little girl,’ and Turks turned to face the little girl and gently put her paw up on the girl’s shoulder. The girl’s mother and grandmother, who didn’t speak English, saw the gesture and began to cry immediately. Turks brought comfort to these witnesses as they prepared to testify against their grandfather, father and husband.
“Our dogs never cease to amaze me each and every day. Not only do our dogs help children and adult victims cope with stressful situations and open up to discuss difficult memories; they also provide stress relief to the staff, who are also impacted each and every day by their clients’ stories.”
CPL has placed more than 750 service and companion dogs nationwide since its inception in 1989 and currently provides support to nearly 200 active partnerships and 50 to 60 dogs in training, Downie says.
Centre County District Attorney’s Office
Faith E. Summers is a victim witness advocate at the Centre County District Attorney’s Office. Summers started a therapy dog program at the courthouse in 2009 when CPL placed Princess in their care. Sadly, Princess passed away a few years ago, but the District Attorney’s Office is in line to get another Courthouse Dog from CPL.
Summers, along with Victim Advocate Liz Rosenberg and Assistant Victim Advocate Lani Brownell, will be working with the new Courthouse Dog to assist victims and witnesses while in court and also during meetings with attorneys and law enforcement. District Attorney Bernie Cantorna and Assistant District Attorney Andrew Stover will also work with the dog while participating in the upcoming Centre County Behavioral Health Court.
Rosenberg cannot speak highly enough of CPL.
“The [CPL] folks came to check out the environment in which the dog would be working,” she recalls. “They looked at things like the height of tables and desks, where handlers would have the dog, where it would rest, things like that. They are attentive to the work the dog does for clients, but also really thoughtful about the environment the dog will be in and whether they’re safe and comfortable when they’re not working. They also take into consideration the surroundings. We’re in downtown Bellefonte, so it can be a bit chaotic.”
Summers attests to how Princess was able to calm children and adults alike.
“The dog brings a lot of comfort to the person or group it’s working with,” Summers says. “It’s really there to provide unconditional love and support—all the things dogs do.”
Summers recalls as her most profound memory of Princess’s support a story similar to Downie’s.
“A little girl was on the witness stand testifying in front of her abuser. She was being asked to describe in detail what the abuser did—it was sexual abuse—and the victim was starting to falter. She was not able to say the things she needed to be able to say. Princess at that moment was at her feet at the witness stand. The little girl reached down and began petting Princess, and in response Princess began nudging her with her nose. The little girl began to speak again and was able to get out what had happened to her.”
Rosenberg says that when victims must relive traumatic events, “It can be almost like they’re back there, in that time and space, so to have something literally nudging you and reminding you, ‘Hey you’re here, you’re not back there, you’re here, you’re safe,’ I think it is a way to help keep people grounded.”
“It also gives them back a little bit of control,” Summers adds. “We will hand over the leash to the child, so that child feels they’re in control. It’s under the supervision of a handler, of course, but it’s helpful.”
Penn State Student Affairs
Maggie R. Doby is a senior staff therapist/clinical social worker at the Penn State Center for Counseling and Psychological Services, and Susanna Hummer is a case manager at CAPS. Together they worked on the process to have canine therapy as part of CAPS.
Doby and Hummer attest to how therapy dogs act as a complementary service in therapy, and “can help be an icebreaker in the therapist/client relationship, giving the client the opportunity to sit and pet the dog while getting comfortable in an environment that may initially feel uneasy. They can even help to regulate someone’s nervous system due to their calming impact. Research has shown that spending even 10 minutes with a pet can help to reduce stress.”
Doby’s desire to incorporate a dog into her work came about organically.
“When we moved to State College many years ago and would walk around campus with our dog, college students would flock to us and ask to pet our dog,” Doby remembers. “It was clear how many students were longing for that comfort of home, or for some type of animal connection.
“Many of our college students experience homesickness when they arrive on campus, and they often express missing their pets,” continues Doby. “When I started full-time as a therapist at CAPS, it seemed like a natural next step to ask about certifying my yellow Labrador Luke so he could be part of the PSU campus experience.
“Luke was so well-received and made a positive impact on the thousands of students he was able to meet and spend time with. When Luke had a scheduled outreach event, we would often see the same students show up, on different parts of campus, because they wanted to get some face time with him. It was a special time in my career, to be able to offer Luke to the campus community, because I know how happy he made people in those moments.”
Many on campus mourned when Luke died of cancer in 2020. CAPS does not yet have a new canine “employee,” but continues to plan Caring Canines Days, which Hummer says “is the most well-received outreach event of the year.” Twice a year (except for a pandemic pause) Mt. Nittany Dog Training Club members set up outside CAPS with their dogs.
“The students absolutely love the time with the dogs,” she says. “They show up and some will spend an hour or more, just going around and petting the different dogs. The students will often connect and reminisce with each other about their family pets and what they miss, what their quirks are, how excited they are to see them again at the next break. It is a great way to connect students and casually chat while interacting with the dogs.
“We have had students tell us they think they did better on their exams because of the time spent with the dogs prior to going to their test. It seems like a little break, to be in the moment and connect with something outside of themselves.” T&G
Teresa Mull is a freelance writer who lives in Philipsburg. She shares her home with a Norwich terrier.
This story appears in the November 2022 issue of Town&Gown
