Hope Animal-Assisted Crisis Response

This has been a busy year for our National Dog Day heroes that I'm recognizing today.  Hope Animal-Assisted Crisis Response uses their dogs to help people deal with crises and there have definitely been a lot of those in 2011.

This group currently has teams that visit natural disaster sites, shootings, train derailments, and memorials (to name a few examples).  Because a crisis situation often has loud noises, bad smells, and a lot of chaos, the dogs and humans are extremely well trained.  Hope AACR requires their teams to have been practicing AAT/AAA for at least a year before the team can start their AACR training.  The humans have to be especially alert because in crisis it is much easier for an animal to get stressed.  On top of that, these teams are made up of volunteers, which means that the people going to these nerve-wracking, heart wrenching scenes have to pay for their own transportation, vet bills, etc.

The interactions facilitated by these amazing teams are a fabulous pay off though, and make it all worth it!

Have you ever experienced a crisis?  How did you cope?

Puppies Behind Bars

Today's National Dog Day Heroes start out life in an unlikely place, prison.

The Puppies Behind Bars program brings 8 week old puppies to live and train in prisons.  The inmates are the dogs' sole caretaker.  While the puppies are growing and training, they are also teaching and helping.  The inmates learn how to be caring and compassionate because of their role.

This program has high expectations for these little puppies.  The end goal is that they will become Explosion Detection Dogs, Service Dogs, or companion dogs for soldiers returning from war.  How empowering for their trainers to know that their dog they worked with went on to save lives!

I noticed on their website that Puppies Behind Bars pays 100% for the cost of raising the puppies their food, vet services, educational supplies for the puppy raisers, teachers' salary, and travel.  Here's a link to some ways that you can support this awesome program.

Great Spot!

National Dog Day is celebrated every year on August 26th, since it's creation in 2004.  Last Friday I had every intention of posting about what a special day it was but that didn't end up happening.  So I decided that instead I will highlight a different group each day this week that uses dogs in a healing manner.

Today's amazing dog group is the Tennessee Safety Spotters.  This group uses Deaf dogs to get their message across and as you can guess by their name, their message is about safety.  One program teaches children about fire safety, another, focuses on preventing dog bites.  Getting children accustomed to a good sized dog, and how to behave around that animal, will teach them not to fear dogs and instead respect them.

When I was in school, the only "dog" that came to teach us about safety was someone dressed as McGruff.  As entertaining as that was, my classmates and I didn't learn anything about real police dogs, or what to do if we met a strange dog.

One other thing about the Tennessee Safety Spotters, the fact that they use Deaf dogs is a teaching tool in itself.  Children are able to see that being Deaf doesn't really make you that different.  These incredible dogs look like any other Dalmatian.  Instead of being handicapped, their extreme intelligence is displayed in their ability to understand sign language commands and perform activities like crawling under smoke and calling 911.

I think that the Tennessee Safety Spotters are definitely on to something.  They show that everyone has something to teach.  To borrow a quote from their website "These special dogs hear with their hearts, not with their ears."

Reading is for the Dogs

© Charles B. Barton
Compulsory Education

I've always enjoyed reading, and I never minded reading in front of my class, especially if I could practice ahead of time.  But that's not the case for everyone.  For some, reading is a challenge, for others they don't like the attention of reading out loud.  Yet, round robin reading is still something that is used in classrooms everyday.

So why am I writing about this in my blog?  Because many places are using animals to help struggling readers.  Dogs are great listeners, they don't correct you when you don't pronounce a word right.  They don't even seem to care whether you are a slow reader or not.  Having a child read to a dog allows the child to practice reading aloud.  Different skills are used in silent reading vs. oral reading, so encouraging both types of reading is important.  Plus, having an animal around makes things more fun, and it's great for new readers to equate reading with fun.

I'm talking mainly about dogs as reading pals because all of the animal partner reading programs that I know of use dogs.  That might be because cats have a tendency to sit on the book when you are trying to read it, which isn't really conducive to reading.  Or is that just something that my cat does?

Faith, the Dog

Last week I introduced Ricochet, a "SURFice" dog.  Today I'd like to highlight Faith.  This amazing dog only has two legs but is able to get around on her own.  She does it by walking on her two hind legs!  Faith is often an inspiration to the people she meets allowing them to believe that they too can overcome enormous odds.

Listening to the different things Faith's family says, I hear all of the ways this dog has played a healing role.  She literally gave her human family faith again, she was an answer to their prayers.  She has been a therapy dog, a reading dog, and part of a motivational speaking team (her owner does the speaking).

Here's her website where you can see what she's up to.  I just found out that she was in New Orleans this past weekend, promoting the grand opening of Belladoggie, a place for your dog to go to heal.

Animals in the Office

I talked about animals in the classroom but what about the workplace?  I'm lucky enough to be employed at the Audubon Zoo where there are all kinds of exotic creatures.  The thing is, the animals that do the most "work" are two guinea pigs named Betty and Veronica, that live in the education office.

These two little girls are called on when the workload it too much.  Just holding a guinea pig, takes the tension out of your body and the longer you hold one, your stress seems to melt away.  For that time period, you are lulled into a sense of calm by the purring noise they make when you stroke them.  After letting Veronica nestle against your body, you feel refreshed and ready to work again.  That rude person that was on the phone doesn't matter because Betty will still show you affection.

The fact that positivity breeds positivity, means that even just sharing an office space with these two happy guinea pigs brings up the morale.  I could be working on writing confirmation letters, a dull tedious task, and suddenly I hear Betty bucking like a bronco in her enclosure and it brings a smile to my face.  (In guinea pigs that bucking behavior is called "popcorning" and is a sign of happiness.)

Maybe this is why some companies started participating in "take your dog to work day".  People are starting to realize that animal are beneficial to adults as well as children.  Have you ever taken a pet to work?  Or worked somewhere that had an "office pet"?  Mark your calendar for next year's date June 22, 2012 and see if you can detect a difference when you add an animal to your office.

Monica snuggling Betty

Green Chimneys

Green Chimneys uses animals (wildlife, farm animals and service dogs) to help heal many different groups of people.  Children with mental health issues, children with learning disorders, physically challenged youth, "at risk" youth, runaways and homeless youth, LBQTA, and adults with mental retardation all interact with the animals at Green Chimneys.

Rosie, the dog that went to court, was one of the dogs that went through a Green Chimneys program.

This is a place that I've wanted to be a part of ever since I heard about it.  Right now they have lots of job openings, along with internship and volunteer opportunities.  I have to finish PT school, but then this is the type of thing that I am interested in doing.

Here's a video:

I'm really excited that Dr. Ross, the man that started it all, mentioned that he wants Green Chimneys to be a model.  Maybe he can help me start my own program   in New Orleans.

Here's a shorter video for people with short attention spans: