By L. Blake Rivas, MHA - SKMC Class of 2024
Dogs were first domesticated more than 20,000 years ago.[1] At first, dogs and humans simply coexisted peacefully, but soon humans started selectively breeding dogs for nearly every purpose imaginable – everything from hunting, guarding, herding, and more. This already versatile skillset among canines expanded even further in 1947 when dogs entered yet another field: healthcare.[2]
Today, dogs serve a wide range of purposes in healthcare and have a growing body of evidence supporting their use. Studies show that even a single interaction with a dog has substantial physiologic benefits, such as lowering blood pressure[3], relieving anxiety[4], reducing perceived pain[5], and, of course, improving mood[6]. In hospitals, patients and staff most commonly experience these benefits during therapy dog visits.
Animal therapy visits consist of a human handler bringing a certified therapy dog to staff spaces, patient rooms, or waiting areas for short visits with anyone who is interested. Generally, these visits are relatively casual and do not have a formal therapeutic or clinical endpoint that is anticipated or tracked in any way; the only intended outcome of the visits is mutual enjoyment of the patient and the therapy dog.
I first became involved in animal therapy in ten years ago when I started making visits to my local hospital’s hematology and oncology infusion center with my Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Scooter. Since then, I have visited hundreds of patients, begun evaluating and guiding other therapy dog teams, helped write our hospital’s animal therapy policies, and have personally trained and certified two more dogs in therapy work. These experiences have been incredibly rewarding, because therapy visits make such a difference for patients and staff.
In animal therapy, I found that there are generally two types of patients: (1) patients who like dogs, but are lonely and primarily want to talk to the dog’s handler for company and (2) patients who only want to interact with the dog and have no interest in interacting with the dog’s handler. Both types of patients experience the quantifiable benefits mentioned earlier, but I’ve also observed many intangible benefits to patients, particularly for the second type of patient who engage solely with the dog.
Over the ten years I’ve been involved with therapy work, I have seen many instances where patients and therapy dogs have had interactions that could only be described as magical. Some patients are so overcome with joy at seeing the therapy dogs that they are brought to tears and will sit with a therapy dog for an hour or more. Other patients have come out of their shell and wanted to talk for the first time in days or even weeks during our visits. In some cases, I’ve even seen patients make their first efforts to speak or move since suffering a debilitating accident or medical condition. Formal empirical evidence and personal experience have convinced me that dog therapy is as legitimate a tool as traditional medical therapies for managing patients’ anxiety and improving their overall wellbeing.[1]
Despite the supporting formal research and anecdotal evidence, however, there are not nearly enough therapy dogs working in the United States. Currently there are only about 50,000 therapy dogs[7] available to take care of the 36.2 million hospital admissions in 2019.[8] This number is thankfully on the rise because of growing awareness of therapy dogs’ value and improved access to high-quality training resources. I hope that therapy dog visits will become much more widely available to patients over the course of my career because of the many benefits they have in a clinical setting.
If you are interested in becoming involved with animal therapy, a great first place to start would be looking into the certification process. There are dozens organizations that certify therapy animals in the United States – some of the most reputable include: Pet Partners, Alliance of Therapy Dogs, and Therapy Dogs International. Pursuing a certification is essentially a universal requirement for becoming a therapy team at hospitals because they typically involve a formal background check, veterinary wellness check, and provide teams with thousands to millions of dollars of liability coverage.
Sources
[1] Botigué, L., Song, S., Scheu, A., et al. (2017). Ancient European dog genomes reveal continuity since the Early Neolithic. Nat Commun 8, 16082. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms16082
[2] Frankel, R. (2014). Dogs at war: Smoky, a healing presence for wounded WWII soldiers. National Geographic. Available from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/140520-dogs-war-canines-soldiers-military-healing-yorkshire-terrier-smoky
[3] Katcher et al. (1983). New perspectives on our lives with companion animals. Pp.352-62. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[4] Cole at al. (2007) Animal-assisted therapy in patients hospitalized with heart failure. Am J Crit Care. 16:575-85. Available from https://doi.org/10.4037/ajcc2007.16.6.575
[5] Calcaterra et. Al (2015). Post-operative Benefits of Animal-Assisted Therapy in Pediatric Surgery: A Randomized Study. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0125813. Available from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125813
[6] Marcus, D. (2013). The Science Behind Animal-Assisted Therapy. Curr Pain Headache Rep 17:322. Doi: 10.1007/s11916-013-0322-2.
[7] Lombardi, L. (2018). Therapy dogs work miracles. But do they like their jobs? National Geographic. Available from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/animals-dogs-therapy-health-pets
[8] Total number of hospital admissions in the U.S. from 1946 to 2019. Available from https://www.statista.com/statistics/459718/total-hospital-admission-number-in-the-us/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20there%20were%20over,admissions%20in%20the%20United%20States.
