Rats and Full Grown Dogs

At my first summer course, "Integration of Animals into Therapeutic Settings," I met a wide array of service animals. There were well trained and bubbly Labradors, Timber and Samantha, Rocky, an impressive, full sized collie, and three female rats, Rosie, Ruby and Thelma.

Rats as service animals? You might ask.

Yes. Indeed.

Rats work with people who have no presumptions about where to find connection, people who, perhaps, were castoffs themselves. Rats have the long tail which, if you focus on it, can seem a bit disturbing, but they more than make up for this with their cute little faces and winning personalities.

What animal assisted therapy is: Goal directed interventions where an animal meets specific training criteria and is used as an integral part of the treatment process as directed and delivered by a professional human service provider.

Basically, the therapy operates on the belief that by using animals as a tool in therapy, we can begin to help people heal, learn new ways of thinking, change their core beliefs, and have a happier existence, all the while learning what it feels like to have an animal accept and love you as you are.

Its powerful stuff.

When I got home, I took Phil for a long walk. We came up on a group of kids playing with a parachute outside as part of a Sunday School class. Phil was immediately surrounded. We sat and he seemed to smile at the kids, happy to know them, see them, be seen by them. He didn't want to leave them.

Whenever we go for walks, at least 2 people, but usually more, comment on his beauty and his sweet little happy walk. He wants to connect. My role will be to help him learn how to be the best dog he can be so he can do the work he was born to do. When we got home from our walk, which took us all the way across town and back so we could pick up Cowgirl and bring her home with us, both dogs were muddy. Cowgirl was happy about this, Phil was not.

It's a collie thing.

So I took them to Petco for a bath, where the groomers remembered them both and knocked quite a bit of money off the price just because it was Phil and Cowgirl.

This was important, because, the other thing I did when I got home was begin to get Phil equipped. He (and Cowgirl) will now use seat belts in the car, Phil will have a new gentle leader and his very own toothbrush.

Phil is also signed up for obedience classes starting this week. The first class is Wednesday night and I'm supposed to bring a list of things I love about Phil, things I want him to learn and my goals for the class. I already know what Im going to say.

Right now, I am working on ideas for an assisted intervention (AAI) that can used with women who lose custody of their children, with the goal of helping them learn to create relationships with others and themselves, begin to see themselves as valuable and lovable and gain the confidence to seek custody of their child, or begin a new phase of their life based on cognitive beliefs that will help them be happy, independent and ready to take on the world. It's a tall order, but I believe, necessary. The cycle I see for many women who are homeless or in poverty is a painful one of hope (new relationship), fear (having a baby to seal it), hope (baby is coming), loss (baby is taken away just after birth), and abandonment (they go home alone). I think there is a place for the lessons animals have to teach us here, I'm not sure what it is, but I have four days to come up with some possibilities...
Onward.