When two shaggy, slobbering balls of fur visited Carleton last month, the lineup to give the therapy dogs a pet and some love was definitely longer than the lineups at every coffee place on campus.
Maddie Adams, Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) vice-president (student issues), said therapy dogs were included as a part of CUSA’s Pop the Stigma campaign during October midterms.
“Pop the Stigma is CUSA’s mental health awareness week. It has been proven that animals can lower people’s stress. Having therapy dogs [on campus] throughout the week is a positive way to make people think about their mental health,” Adams said.
Adams said therapy dogs are almost always brought to Carleton in October during midterm season when students tend to have higher levels of stress.
“It is super important to maybe take five minutes to sit down, breathe, hang out with a dog, and feel a bit more relaxed,” Adams said.
She said students who have left their pets at home while they attend university especially benefit from therapy animals. They are able to come and pet a dog after not being able to be comforted by their own animals since leaving home for school.
Jenna Spagnoli, a fourth-year social work student who attended the therapy dog session at Carleton, described the dogs as “comforting.”
“I think schools and institutions like that can be seen as a kind of sterile place, and not really comforting or warming,” Spagnoli said.
Having therapy dogs come to Carleton is a nice way to counter these feelings, Spagnoli said. They provide a way for students to focus on self-care while on campus.
She added she thinks there are many mental and physical benefits from participating in therapy animal sessions.
She said they are a nice, temporary distraction from the stress of her school work and her other responsibilities that help her calm down and combat stress during the busiest times of the academic year.
“When you’re stressed, there’s usually a lot of physical symptoms. You feel sweaty, have heart palpitations, and stomach aches. Anything that brings down the stress is going to help reduce all of those symptoms as well,” Spagnoli said.
Caroline Williams, a third-year humanities student, said she thinks animals are fantastic for therapy and pets can act as therapy animals.
“Animals usually have a very happy disposition and they’re very good at sensing how you’re feeling. I feel like they really like to comfort people,” Williams said.
She added they can be extremely beneficial for a stressed university student because they allow one to interact with a living and loving creature during study breaks, rather than a piece of technology, such as a cell phone or television.
“I feel like it relieves stress because you feel a genuine connection with something, even if it’s not a person,” Williams said. “It’s a creature that actually gives you affection and love, and makes you feel happy.”
Williams has a dwarf rabbit named Luna. She said the happiness and love of a pet can help motivate her to study more and with greater effectiveness.
“Everyone that has a pet will tell you that there is a genuine connection there, even if it’s not spoken . . . you feel loved and you feel like you’re important to that animal. You feel like there’s always someone waiting for you that loves you and wants to be around you,” Williams said.
Although Spagnoli said she believes therapy animals are an excellent way to combat stress, she said she would not necessarily equate them with more traditional forms of therapy in terms of how well they are able to help students with their mental health.
“I think a therapist helps with dealing with long-term stress, and therapy dogs are an immediate stress reliever for the day. Seeing a therapy dog isn’t going to help you deal with your stress in a long-term kind of way,” Spagnoli said. “It might help you for that afternoon or for that day, but seeing a therapist will help you over weeks or months.”
Margot Montgomery, a volunteer and chair of the community outreach team at Ottawa Therapy Dogs (OTD), said her late Portuguese water dog was able to sense when someone was upset and needed comforting.
“She knew who needed her,” Montgomery said, “and many [therapy dogs] do.”
Montgomery said it takes a specific type of dog to be a therapy animal, because you can’t completely re-train the nature of an animal.
“A therapy dog has a temperament and has been tested and established to be very tolerant, very calm, and they are usually smart dogs that pick up on the needs of people they interact with,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery said while the breed of the dog is less important than its temperament, Rottweilers, which are a generally more aggressive breed, may not be as effective in comforting an individual. Montgomery said OTD employs many golden retrievers as therapy animals because they have a good temperament and are “lovely people-oriented dogs.”
Dian McTaggart, chair of Therapeutic Paws of Canada (TPOC), said dogs are the most popular therapy animals, because they are generally more people-oriented and have a more tolerant temperament compared to other animals.
McTaggart said TPOC also has therapy cats, birds, rabbits, and horses.
“It takes a special cat to visit. It must be comfortable with new surroundings and being handled,” McTaggart said.
Animal therapy & Endorphins
“Oxytocin is released when we are petting, or even gazing, at dogs. Oxytocin modulates inflammation, decreases the perception of pain, and is central to feelings of social attachment, love, and trust,” McTaggart said. “And oxytocin is increased in the body when you pet a dog, even one you aren’t familiar with.”
That’s why for animal lovers, in particular, cuddling with a furry friend seemingly makes all their anxieties disappear. It’s the physiological changes in the body that “include lowering stress hormones, releasing endorphins that promote feelings of well-being,” and lowering blood pressure, that make pets and therapy animals so beneficial to one’s health, according to McTaggart.
“The use of therapy dogs can educate the public on the important role that pets play in our lives,” McTaggart said. “Dogs and cats are considered members of the family [and] they play an important role in providing unconditional love and companionship.”
Students & therapy animals
For students living away from their homes and pets while at university, McTaggart said it can be a difficult adjustment to not having their furry study buddy around to cuddle and pat when they need a break from their school work.
Montgomery said she noticed this when OTD came to Carleton a few years ago during exam time. She said she thinks students who were “missing the comforts of home [were] at least able to come and play with, or snuggle with, or pat a dog and talk about their dog.”
According to Julie Davies, OTD program coordinator, the organization came to Carleton because of student-driven requests for therapy dogs.
“We get a lot of requests to run programs for mental health weeks or around exam times when students are stressed out,” Davies said.
For students with autism or severe anxiety issues, “there isn’t that stress of being self-conscious so they can just act and focus on what they are working on,” Davies said.
In terms of working on mental health issues, animal therapy is about facilitating conversation and making the environment more relaxing, Davies said.
“The other forms of therapy all have their purposes and, in fact, we work with therapists and social workers and cognitive behavioural therapists, but we’re volunteers bringing our dogs to be part of the dynamic and help with the therapy,” Davies said.
North American court systems are beginning to use therapy dogs, she said.
“Dogs are brought to the courtroom to provide emotional support for victims of crime,” McTaggart said.
In addition, TPOC and OTD therapy animals visit hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities, according to Davies, as they were the first applications of animal therapy to help patients recover from surgery and illness. Therapy dogs work with patients with communication problems and memory problems.
Montgomery said she, and volunteers like her, are so willing to share their furry friends because they know the relief it brings.
