Animal partners prepare counseling students for challenging client work

Animal partners prepare counseling students for challenging client work

Dr. Celeste Crawford, a clinical associate professor in East Carolina University's Department of Addictions and Rehabilitation Studies and director of the Navigate Counseling Clinic, usually has a teaching assistant at her side - the best kind of indescribable shelter mix named Theo.

Theo may be the most patient, accepting member of Pirate Nation.

Crawford has had other therapy dogs in the past and what she's always found is that patients, students - everyone - is drawn to dogs. They have an uncanny ability to make complicated situations less fraught, to crack open the most guarded hearts.

First semester counseling students are no different than anyone entering a new phase in life. They don't know their professors, Crawford said. They feel a bit lost, and early in her teaching career, Crawford thought about how to make herself more approachable so her new charges feel less pressure. Now, before classes even begin, she sends her students an email with a simple message: I have a therapy dog and he'll be with me in class.

"I've only had one student tell me they were uncomfortable, but they were OK with him coming if he was on his leash," Crawford said. "And by the end of the semester, they were best friends."

Dogs have a way of making things better, she said.

Therapy Work with Animals

Dogs and their people go together like peanut butter and chocolate, but that doesn't mean that having a dog in the room magically makes things better in a counseling session.

Crawford is adamant about people understanding the different ways that animals are asked to work with humans.

Service dogs have specific training and responsibilities. Therapy animals help clients and therapists to dig deeper into their work. And then there are emotional support animals that usually have no training and can be helpful but are sometimes more of a challenge in social situations.

Animals all have their place in our lives. It's important for therapists to know which works best for their clients, Crawford said.

"There should be a strategic therapeutic reason that you want your dog there," Crawford said.

Previously, Crawford volunteered at a psychiatric hospital where patients with "very significant impairments" received treatment. One man, she was told, hadn't spoken to anyone for the entirety of his commitment.

"By the end of a group session he was telling my dog, 'I used to have a dog named Charlie. I lived on a farm,'" Crawford said. "The therapist told me he hadn't said a word for three days. For some of the patients, it was a very familiar interaction, and it would trigger a calm state or a memory. And a lot of times the clients would talk to the dog rather than to the people in the room."

Dogs especially help with occupational, physical and speech language therapies, sister disciplines in the College of Allied Health Sciences, Crawford said. She took one of her former dogs, Addie, with her to speech therapy sessions, where patients would role-play with her, making the work a bit more fun.

"At the children's rehab hospital there was a little girl who had a brain injury from some surgery, and she had lost her voice. They had been working in speech therapy sessions to say Addie's name and a few of the things that the therapist observed me doing with Addie," Crawford said. "That had been her homework in therapy because nothing else was working. She wasn't as self-conscious talking to Addie because she knew that Addie wasn't going to laugh at her voice."

Therapy Animals as Adjunct Instructors

Crawford believes it's important to expose her students to the potential value of using animals in therapy, as a technique to unburden journeymen therapists from the start.

"Counseling takes a lot out of you as a clinician. You're going to hear hard stories, you're going to have bad days," Crawford said.

Dr. Cheryl Meola, an assistant professor of addictions and rehabilitation studies, said she loves bringing students to her farm, especially ones that have little, if any, experience with horses.

"If you don't feel good or if you are nervous, the horses are going to be on to you. It's amazing for student growth because they leave here realizing that how they feel impacts their client. It's a visceral experience, really kinesthetic learning," Meola said.

Julie Beck, a Lexington native in the master's in clinical counseling program, was one of Crawford's students who "just lit up" when Theo was present in class. Their interaction led Crawford to recommend that Beck pursue her clinical placement with Meola, who partners with a menagerie - horses, donkeys, chickens and rabbits - at her farm in Ayden to provide clinical counseling, especially for women in recovery.

Beck is effusive and engaging, but she said that wasn't always so. She was anxious to start conversations - what if she messed things up? Working with horses has helped her to find confidence because horses don't have anything to hide and they don't play games: They either accept you or they don't, she said.

Horses, like other animals that assist in therapy, have their own agency that must be respected. Using horses to co-facilitate a therapy session requires all parties, regardless of how many legs they stand on, to be honest and respectful of others.

"You can't chase a client and make them talk about something, but you also can't give them the silent treatment and see if that brings anything out," Beck said. "It's the same with animals."

Lindsay Cobb, a student in the Master of Social Work program at UNC-Chapel Hill, previously worked with communities to solve challenging social problems, but has shifted her focus to complex trauma at the individual level. She manages a horse and participates in Meola's ECU program for her clinical placement.

Cobb said she gets frustrated when she hears that a few prominent therapeutic approaches - which have proven effective in many cases - are the ones most of her peers cite as their main practice for helping clients.

"There are so many other options out there. The motto here is that there is more than one way to grow," Cobb said, of Mane Source Counseling and Coaching, Meola's farm in Ayden.

Beck said rabbits have proven a very effective way to encourage clients to speak with her. During a group session, she had patients hold a rabbit during their time to share. Beck believes the animal interaction helped patients to feel safe, and thereby more willing to engage with the therapeutic task at hand.

But working with horses has probably helped Beck the most to be more considerate with her clients. People emerging from detox or acute mental health challenges can be terribly fragile. By immersing herself in the small herd at the farm, she's learned that unpredictability and being demanding can be counterproductive.

"With horses, a quick movement or touching them in a certain spot they aren't comfortable with can drive them away from you," Beck said. "If you challenge a patient with a hard question, it can be like touching a horse where they don't want to be touched. You're going to get an immediate reaction."

Meola said one of the horses came to the farm because it had become too dangerous to ride, throwing a few people and breaking a few collarbones in the process.

"Her previous owners didn't listen to what she was telling them with her behavior," Meola said, adding that animals have proven crucial to helping humans understand how to regulate their own emotions, and helping her and her fellow students find innovative ways to bring their clients closer to a sense of comfort with themselves.

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