Shelter Helps Youth With Pets

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Bailey the beagle loves to sing for people, especially for treats. So on a recent Friday, there was nothing unusual that a group gathered around the musical beagle to hear canine warbling and offer a bit of applause.

The handful of teens sprawled on comfortable couches couldn’t help but smile, or lightly tap each other in wonderment, as Leonora Sanchez helped her dog reach a howling crescendo climax.

Bailey simply offered a down-dog bow for another treat, which the teens were happy to oblige with. Aside from an annoying photographer moving about, Bailey saw nothing wrong going on and enjoyed a few special moments with the kids before he took a break for a one-on-one session of catch in the backyard.

Bailey, a Hurricane Katrina rescue, could probably tell the teens a thing or two about survival. But his form of communication is not through words but unconditional love, which he is happy to offer. One look in the dog’s soulful eyes and it’s easy to forget any troubles for the moment.

And that’s his mission. Bailey, a therapy dog through the Santa Fe Animal Shelter & Humane Society’s Pet Outreach program, has become a weekly treat for the kids passing through the Youth Shelter’s emergency shelter. The 24-hour shelter offers a range of services for children ages 10-17 who might be homeless, have run away from a troubled home, or are otherwise at-risk.

Youth Shelters also runs a transitional living program for homeless, pregnant and parenting teens; a street outreach program; and clinical services including community-based counseling and juvenile community corrections, which help incarcerated teens reintegrate into the community and their families.

While Youth Shelters and the animal shelter have been working closely in other programs for some time, the therapy program started recently. According to program director Toni Kuehn, the pilot program has worked wonders.

“The kids just break out in smiles,” she said. “And they laugh. They all want to touch Bailey. That has been really rewarding.”

While countless studies have shown animals help relieve stress and bring a sense of stability to people, watching the teens interact with Bailey is amazing, said Joan Heiden, Youth Shelter’s clinical director.

“With Bailey, they can give him a treat and he’ll do a trick,” Heiden said. “It makes them feel more in control in that moment of their situation, which is so important. When you’re in a situation like being in a shelter, you’re very much not in control, so that provides them that one moment where they can say, ‘Oh, I can do that.’ ”

Connecting animals with teens was a natural for Kuehn, a social worker and freelance dog trainer.

“Animals really do bring out the best in people,” she said. “And not to draw too many parallels to what we do here, but I am 100 percent positive re-enforcement in my training techniques and methods. Here at the shelter, we have a strengths-based program that is never punitive and always constructive.”

Kuehn started taking a few youths to the animal shelter last year as a community service project. The weekly outings allowed the children to work on basic canine manners and grooming with the animals.

The vocational aspect of working with animals was something that Kuehn instantly hit upon, where the children could easily develop their skills into income-generating work like petsitting and dog walking. Kuehn and Mary Hendrix, the animal shelter’s volunteer coordinator, brainstormed ways the two groups could collaborate and expand the program.

They hit upon an internship program, where teens work one-on-one with shelter staff. Four teens have already gone through the program.

“With the community service, I noticed how the kids relaxed around the dogs,” Kuehn said. “There was a lot of reporting from the kids about how much better they felt after being at the shelter, and how they enjoyed exercising the dogs. So we thought, ‘Why not bring the animals here in a really structured way?’ ”

Bailey is the first leg, so to speak, of the therapy program, which will likely be expanded to include a process to help children feel comfortable about reading. The Reading to Dogs program, which is already in several schools, pairs dogs with children: The dog’s calming presence helps children improve reading skills and gain confidence.

“It’s widely known that when kids work with dogs, they do so much better,” Kuehn said. “They are more relaxed and there’s no judgment. A lot of our kids are way behind grade level in terms of their reading, so one of the things we want to do is promote relaxation around gaining literacy.”

Just having a dog around the shelter helps the teens feel better about themselves, Kuehn said. They relax and often begin reminiscing about their own animals.

“Some people might think that’s a sad thing because they miss their dog, but what we find with kids who have been displaced is that some of their best memories happened around their animal,” Kuehn said. “It particularly helps with kids who have emotional disturbances or mental illness. We find it helps their ability to integrate, which improves their function.”

Learning how to build a different or new relationship with a dog is ripe with the opportunity to develop their own life skills, Kuehn said. The youth naturally draw parallels between the homeless dogs and their own lives.

The healing power of animals works in many ways. Sanchez, Bailey’s human companion, said she also gets a lot out of her visits with the sociable beagle.

“He loves to be around people,” she said. “I think he really makes a difference in people’s lives.”

Filed under: Dogs and Cats

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