Unleashing Hope: The Transformative Power of Therapy Dogs

What if your dog has the potential to provide comfort and healing to those in need? In this episode I chat with Sherry Rohde, host of Therapy Dog Talk, a weekly Instagram live series dedicated to therapy dog teams.  We dive headfirst into the world of therapy dogs and service animals. From the distinguishing traits between therapy dogs, emotional support animals, and service dogs, to the specialized training a dog requires for each role, we cover all the bases. We also touch upon the rules and regulations surrounding these special animals, and the process of becoming a therapy animal.

We will be taking a quick summer break, so let's chat in September! 

Useful Links:
https://www.sherrierohde.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Dogs make the best companions for humans. This podcast aims to help make humans better companions for their dogs. Welcome to the Baroo Podcast, a modern lifestyle podcast for dogs and their people. I'm your host, charlotte Bain. I've been caring for other people's dogs for more than 15 years and, while I've learned a lot in my career, I definitely don't know at all. So I've collected an ever-evolving roster of amazing dog people and I learn new things from them all the time. Hi you guys. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Baroo Podcast. Today I chat therapy dog work with Sherry Rode. Sherry is a certified dog trainer who also has a master's in marriage and family therapy, and she's the host of the weekly podcast Therapy Dog Talk. We chat about what exactly a therapy dog is, what the process of becoming a therapy dog entails and how to know if your dog has what it takes to work as a therapy dog. So let's jump into the chat. So the your doggies had massages today.

Speaker 2: 1:26

They did yes.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Is that something that you guys do?

Speaker 2: 1:30

Yeah, they get massages. Every three weeks Someone comes and gives them massages. That's like changing.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Is it just therapeutic, or is it for just like relaxation and touch purposes, or yeah, both my dogs are chihuahua mixes, so they hold a lot of tension in their bodies, especially the older one, and so the person who gives them massages we met him at an event through like a local pet boutique that we go to, and it just said he really liked it at the event, and so I asked him how much it cost for him to come and it just was a really good deal, because not only does it help her relax and release the tension, but also since my goal with both of them is for them to do therapy work with me, it makes them have really positive associations with someone else touching them. The other nice thing is he because he is training this area and his background is as a vet tech. If he notices anything on them while he massages them, he lets me know like, hey, you might want to have the vet look at this, et cetera, et cetera, because he knows what to look for better than I do.

Speaker 1: 2:42

How old are your puppies?

Speaker 2: 2:43

Sunny is almost four and Riley is just a little over eight months.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Oh so brand new Cute.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Yeah, we got her the end of January you did?

Speaker 1: 2:56

Were you planning on getting another dog or that just was that like a purposeful, or did you come?

Speaker 2: 3:01

across her.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Sometimes he would just come across their second dog.

Speaker 2: 3:03

I mean, I was like yeah, I wouldn't say it was purposeful, but it was thoughtful. So, sunny, when I brought her home I had a roommate who had a senior dog and Sunny loved her dog so much, she was kind of like a mama to her for a big sister. And then that roommate moved out but Sunny had two other friends in our complex that she was friends with. It was a little redundant, but two other dogs that she was friends with and one of them. So my roommate moved out with her dog at the end of March and then the other dog that we went on walks with and Sunny played with almost every day moved away out of state like at the end of September. And then her third friend, who she always really looked forward to seeing to, died unexpectedly, actually in December.

Speaker 2: 4:02

She was an older dog but it just got to the point where Sunny she's so social, she's always been so social, and so she it was starting to damage really her experiences with other dogs because when we would go for a walk she was so desperate to find a new friend and she'd be like hello, random dog, I've never met you, you want to be my best friend. And they're like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We've skipped a lot of steps and she's like what? Why don't you want to be my friend?

Speaker 1: 4:31

She was overly excited, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:35

And so until then, like I had thought about it off and on. But I didn't really want to get a second dog because I was like you know, it might change my relationship with Sunny Like we have a really good bond, they take her everywhere with me, that she's allowed to go. And it was like, you know, if I get a second dog, it might be like, oh, I have to decide which dog do I choose, or does she have to stay behind because of the other dog? Or like, how is that going to? It's going to impact her life in different ways. But the more she was desperately looking for a new friend, I was like, oh, I don't know, and one of our Instagram friends was fostering a puppy down in San Diego, which is About a two to three hour drive for us. It's not too bad.

Speaker 1: 5:21

What part are you in California? You're in California, like me.

Speaker 2: 5:25

Yeah, I'm in LA, oh, you are me too. What part of LA I've been in this, like in person. We'll have to meet up sometime, yeah. And so she kept posting these stories and reels and whatnot of this puppy and she had the exact same play style as Sunny. Ah, and I was like kind of falling in love through Instagram and so I messaged her about her and I saw how she was really already working with her on training and on just exposing her to different noises and everything. It's like, oh, this dog, she has potential for a therapy dog and I think she would be a really good fit for Sunny, like she's really good, like just the same play style.

Speaker 2: 6:13

So we went down to meet Sunny and the puppy, now Riley we jokingly call her Sophie, riley, carpathia, the third Riley and her sisters. She has three sisters. They came in together and they gave them all names of ships Okay, like Mayflower, and Riley's was Carpathia, but their foster is all called her Sophie. So I was just like, well, if you're a Carpathia, you must be like a third, right, I think you're not just simply Carpathia. So, anyway, they met, they hit it off. It was great, we got approved to adopt her and they're just best friends, they're total sisters.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Yeah, that's so sweet, I love that so much. So you thank you for doing this with me jumping on Chattay. You have a master's in family therapy and you're a certified dog trainer. Were those two things something that you sought out together, or were there two separate desires that you kind of eventually knew that you were able to combine into therapy? Dog work.

Speaker 2: 7:31

Yeah, so it's really interesting how it happened. So my day job is in tech and I was like you know, I need to change I don't know what. So I actually I went through the book and workbook for what colors your parachute? My therapist, who had a background in career accounts, and I went through it. Yeah, and it pointed me towards psychology and I was like you know, that makes sense, like I double-degraded in four years in undergrad because that's just the overachiever that I am. And the only classes that I took for fun was interpersonal communication. It was the only class I had room for that I didn't actually have to take and I really enjoyed my psychology class and so it made perfect sense and I've always really been interested in how people work and sociology as well, and so things just worked out to start my master's program in August of 2020. And it was the perfect time to do that program because it was all virtual and no one was trying to make plans with me anyway. So it worked and it was something that I was doing that.

Speaker 2: 8:31

So Sunny was born in December of 2019. No December, no, sorry August of 2019. I brought her home in December of 2018. And then in, I think June of 2021, she got her CGC and so we had completed all of the obedience classes at our local facility and I was, like you know, I feel like there's more to learn, like there's more I want to work with on her. There's more, there's got to be more, and so I ended up finding this company called Absolute Dogs and all of their training is game space training and it's all virtual and so, yeah, so I started with their like intro 25 day challenge thing and they offer trainings to become a dog trainer.

Speaker 2: 9:20

So it's a little bit different than when you see credentials that are like certified professional dog trainer, cbt. Pashka, I don't have the supervision with live training that you're required for those credentials, but it is called pro dog trainer and I mostly did it for my own dogs. I went through their pro dog trainer, I went through the geek component on top of that and the genius component on top of that. Everything is just kind of silly and fun with them, but you learn. You're learning from that behavior as you're learning from scientific studies and everything. So it's really legit learning about dog behavior and dog body language and how they work and how to really grow their struggles to strength through playing games, which really speaks to me.

Speaker 2: 10:03

So I started doing that at the same time that I was in grad school because, again, I'm a very chiever, so I was a step to myself. It's a problem, but it was really fascinating to study, like childhood development in human psychology at the same time as understanding how the dog's brains worked and there's like so much overlap and I started to realize how much my mental health was impacting my dog and her abilities. At the time I only had sonny and so I got really curious about okay, well, this makes sense. How can I help other therapy dog handlers with this? How can I help people realize, you know, we're such a big component of our dogs, like when I was really anxious, sonny was really anxious, so like we would walk around and interact with people and our trainers would be like, oh, she should be a therapy dog, and then we would go take the test and I was full of anxiety and we would crash and bomb Wow, and it's because she couldn't focus on other people, right, because she was so focused on taking care of me, because we had that bond.

Speaker 2: 11:18

So yeah, so that's when I got just really curious about the intersection of it and I did take that a little bit further and became a certified animal assistant intervention specialist as well, just verifying that, like I've learned what I need to learn to ensure animal services are done safely for the people and for the animals and my goal that expand a little bit on what that is for people.

Speaker 1: 11:43

listening may not have any concept of what that is.

Speaker 2: 11:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a few things right. So a big part of it is being able to understand your dog and know they're feeling comfortable and they're not feeling comfortable. So one of the things I've learned. So a lot of people may be familiar with the ladder of aggression in dogs. I saw it recently reframed, the ladder of communication, which I love, and it's the same behaviors, but the bottom half the person I learned from was referring to them as whispers and the top half as shout. And when we ignore our dog whispers, then they feel like they have to shout to be heard, to advocate for themselves, and sometimes they've learned over and over that whispers just don't work so they go straight to shouting.

Speaker 2: 12:35

And that's not something that I learned through the specialist training, but it's so beautifully illustrates why it's important to understand your dog and their communication when you're working with humans who may or may not be familiar with how to do it. So you're learning what to recognize in your dog as red, yellow, green flags when working with other people. You're learning how to advocate for your dog and for yourself, how to tell someone when your dog needs a break. You're learning about diseases that humans can get from dogs and diseases that dogs can get from humans Interesting and how to really implement risk mitigation in that regard. So that's a lot of what the training is around and just understanding, also like animal welfare and the ethics involved there, really focusing on partnering with your dog, not using them, and I love that and so did you intend to use your dogs for therapy work, or was it really just?

Speaker 1: 13:41

did that come organically?

Speaker 2: 13:45

Yeah. So basically in the process I learned, just in the process of training, I learned about therapy dogs and it's like, oh you know, that would be really cool. I don't think Sunny would enjoy volunteering as a therapy dog. I think volunteer work for her is a little too chaotic.

Speaker 2: 14:02

But from what I've seen with her, she would really thrive with clients in working in a therapeutic setting, and so what we're working towards now is something called animal assisted play therapy, which was developed by Dr Ysavanne Fleet and basically combining play therapy with animal assisted interventions.

Speaker 2: 14:25

So Sunny and Riley, if they get to this point, will join me with clients and they'll be able to partner with me and be a part of those interactions so that they can help, like children and adolescents, learn through modeling, through interactions, how to help themselves by interacting with Sunny and Riley with different interventions. And what was interesting is, even though I stumbled into these kind of at the same time with dog training and with human psychology, I learned that so many people in this space and the animal assisted therapy space have had training both as a mental health professional and as a dog trainer. So it's either that I started as a dog trainer and they're like oh, I really like helping people too, because it's a big part of dog training, or they started as a mental health professional and they're like oh, I want to learn more about how to implement my dog in this work.

Speaker 2: 15:21

I'll maybe become a dog trainer too, so it's very, very interesting how common it is to have both elements in your background going into it.

Speaker 1: 15:29

That makes perfect sense. I think there's still a lot of confusion among some people about what the role of a therapy dog is versus the role of, like, an assistance dog. Could you want to clarify for the listeners what those two different roles are and what the needs are for between those two different jobs?

Speaker 2: 15:53

Yeah, I'll throw in the third one too, just to really do it.

Speaker 2: 15:57

So service dogs or assistance dogs are the ones that are covered under the ADA and USA and that allows people to bring their dogs with them into public settings and settings where pet dogs aren't necessarily allowed, and it's a one-to-one relationship. You are required to have a disability and the dog is required to be task trained for your disability. Those are actually the only requirements there are, like organizations you can go through and trainings you can go through, but none of that is actually mandated by the ADA so you can actually own or train them.

Speaker 2: 16:37

But that's a service animal. So maybe you have PTSD and your dog is task trained to go ahead of you and make sure that nothing is scary. Or maybe you need your dog to be your eyes for you or your ears for you or help you with stability. There's also psychiatric service dogs that help with things like debilitating anxiety, where they're trained to do deep pressure therapy and lay on your lap and help ground you. Things like that I love that.

Speaker 1: 17:10

So that's a service dog or assistance dog. I just learned about that. It's kind of like a weighted blanket type of theory just the pressure and the warmth and that's so great.

Speaker 2: 17:21

The next one is an emotional support animal and they are also a one-to-one relationship dog. So actually so the service dog. By the way, they only have those rights when they're with the person that has the disability. So if my friend had a disability and a service dog but I took the service dog somewhere, the dog would not be allowed the same access with me that they would be allowed with their hammer.

Speaker 1: 17:47

Interesting. That makes sense too.

Speaker 2: 17:50

Yeah, an emotional support animal, again, is for someone who has a disability and they need a letter from a mental health provider or a medical provider either one that says that they're prescribing this animal for them. Basically and I've actually gone through the training to learn how to write those letters because I want to be able to offer that service I really think it's important. The difference with an emotional support animal is they don't have any public access rights. Okay, so they're right. It's kind of very depending on the state, or sometimes even the county In California. Well, federally, they are allowed in housing, even non-ped housing. They're considered a reasonable accommodation. That's really their only benefit. Federally. It used to be that they could fly without being charged and that being required to be in a bag in cabin, but that was recently eliminated due to people abusing the system. So you might remember headlines about the emotional support peacock. Yeah, but depending on where you live, there are other benefits. In California, actually, you're allowed to bring your emotional support animal to work as a reasonable accommodation. So it really depends on where you live. I only looked into the California and LA rules because I was supposed to look into my area as part of the training that I did. So that's again a one-to-one relationship.

Speaker 2: 19:29

A therapy dog, a therapy animal, is one to many and they do not have any public access rights either, just like the emotional support animal. So they are trained to help other people. They go with their handler, whether it's volunteering or coming to work with them. Maybe they work at a dentist's office or with a therapist or they volunteer at the airport or in the school. And those animals they go through training kind of similar to the Canaan Good Citizen things that they go through. But they need to be pretty stable in temperament. They can't be spooked by distractions or noises or they need to be able to, you know, want everyone to pet them. You need to have an animal who wants to be loved. If you have a dog who cannot get enough love and loves everyone they need, they might be a good therapy dog. But if your dog is a little born to try or has a tend, probably not my own personal dog would not drive with being a therapy dog.

Speaker 1: 20:38

He likes me to touch him and snuggle him, but he's not so fond of many other people doing that. I do have a golden retriever. When he was younger I thought that he would be a great fit for one that I care for, for a therapy dog. But then I was reading, I think, on the Canaan Good Citizen that they have to be able to walk by food and things like in a hospital and not be motivated to eat the food. There's no way he could ever do that because he's so food motivated.

Speaker 1: 21:09

If he saw food he would just be all he would run and knock down everything to get to that food, so not a good fit.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Yeah, if you can redirect them from that, it's fine. But yeah, I know they have to stay under control and it's especially in a medical environment. Right, you don't you have, for it's for their own safety, because you don't want them to, like, eat a pill or something like that. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Or pull someone's wires out or knock over something. I mean it's for everybody's safety. I think right, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 21:39

Knock someone over? Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1: 21:42

It's not funny. Okay, so somebody wanted to. How would that's what would make somebody a good if you have a dog that you think might be a good fit for a therapy dog, that is, those are the first. That's like the first level of things that you're looking for, right, they wanted to, you know, move forward into, like seeking credentials to become a therapy dog, like how does that work? So that's probably that's a two part question.

Speaker 2: 22:13

Yeah, totally. So yeah, I would say you know, bare minimum is you need a dog who wants to interact with you. They have to want to do this job. It doesn't matter how much you want to give back to your community, if your dog doesn't enjoy it, do not make them do that. Like, you can train a lot of dogs to be willing to do that because they want the food that you're giving them and training, etc. But it's not fair to the dog to stress them out if that's not something that they really want. So that's, that's bare minimum.

Speaker 2: 22:46

I always say to work towards the Canine Good Citizen requirements. Canine Good Citizen isn't required for all therapy dog organizations, but the therapy dog tests themselves are very similar to the Canine Good Citizen tests. So it's just a little more accessible for some people to find information on it or training locally on it. Like, our training facility didn't have a therapy dog class but they did have a Canine Good Citizen class, for example. So yeah, and then after that it's looking at.

Speaker 2: 23:21

You want to find the right organization and the right environment for you, and I actually have all of this in a guide at bigidetherapydogtalkcom. So the next thing is you want to look at the organization and the environment. So you want to think about where your dog is going to excel. So one of the things that I've seen people reference a lot in talking to them on therapy dog talk is their dog either does better staying in one location or their dog does better on the move, and so you want to think about what type of environment is going to work better for them. You also want to think about what type of environment you're going to excel in.

Speaker 2: 24:10

For example, medical facilities for me not good, had too many bad experiences there, get too much anxiety. It's back to work for me the most and I have had people say like that helps them for some reason to have a better association with it. It's not going to work for me. So if there is a place that you know you really want to work like maybe there's you just you love the airport, or there's an organization that you just have a big heart for and you want to get more involved with, I would start by asking them what organizations, what therapy organization, they work with, because a lot of them work with specific ones. For example, lax works specifically with Alliance of Therapy Dogs. There are other places that work specifically with pet partners, and so you just want to make sure that if you have your heart set on a place, you go through the organization that they work with, because otherwise you're going to go through all that work to get certified and then find out you can't launch it there. So right.

Speaker 2: 25:19

But if you don't have a specific place in mind, then I would look at. There's a lot of good local organizations, but there's also like five national ones that are recognized by the AKC, which take that for whatever you will. If you care about like therapy dog titles, they have to be accredited by the AKC. So a lot of people go through like pet partners or alliance therapy dogs, love on a leash, bold and beautiful, bright and beautiful therapy dogs. And some of that depends on what's important to you. So maybe you care about being able to teeter, test your dog, teeter which one. Maybe you care about being able to feed your dog a specific diet, maybe it's important to you that your dog can wear a costume.

Speaker 2: 26:20

So there's a lot of different things that you need to know. So the guide that I have actually talks about a lot of those. So you know what questions ask. That's a big thing is just knowing what questions to ask. Some of them care what Breed your dog is, or if they're also a service dog, or if they're a dog or you have any disabilities. So it's really it really comes down to the person as to which one they go through and also who has testers, evaluators or active chapters in their area, because having that community can be really helpful too.

Speaker 1: 26:57

Do you know of any, and I don't know, but do you have a success story where you've seen a therapy dog that's really made a difference in either a child or someone's life or ability to function? I guess is the word yeah. Yeah, just kind of to show the important, because I think a lot of people may not even really understand the importance you know, unless you're a huge dog lover. You know the importance of therapy dog work in mental health right.

Speaker 2: 27:32

Yeah, yeah, you know dogs. There's so many studies that show the dogs lower our blood pressure, they reduce their anxiety. There's, there's so many great studies around that and I'm sorry I don't have those figures off the top of my head, but they have. They are scientifically proven to be really helpful in these things. I'm borrowing stories to tell me so I'm going to give credit to them. One team that really has to mind because we shared this story when I talked with her, so I know I can share it.

Speaker 2: 28:02

But Dina and PD in Oklahoma it's tripod PD on Instagram and I worked with a child who had been through just some really horrific things in life and really had failure to thrive, which means just nothing motivated him, nothing interested in him, he just it was really sad and really hard. And when he met PD so PD is a three legged pit, full rescue, and you got so excited. He lit up so big and the handler had a second leash for the dog, because you always have to attach the dog yourself with a therapy dog and dog and be connected. But she had a second leash. So she was like, hey, I really need your help. Can you help me walk PD? I need you to help me and he's like, yeah, and so he held one leash and she held the other and they walked up and down the hallways and they repeatedly visited this child, as I recall, and just he just completely transformed, completely, just by being able to help walk. So it was really really special.

Speaker 1: 29:19

I love that. I want to circle back a little bit and really in briefly touch on play therapy. Can you expand a little bit more on play therapy? You were saying that that's really the course that you studied, that it was game training. Right, it was training through games. Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 2: 29:33

Yeah, yeah, because I did. I talked about play therapy and game space training. Game space training for dogs is where you're really it's caught you sure? Let me see how can I easily break this down and not talking circles and be confusing. So you're playing games with your dog with a goal which actually is very similar to play therapy, which is why I'm really interested in that, because they blend so well together. But your goal is so you're looking at In in games based therapy, there are concepts, so you're looking to grow confidence in your dog, or optimism in your dog, or calmness or grit or Flexibility, proximity, relationship, whatever it may be, and there are different games designed to grow those concepts from your dog.

Speaker 2: 30:25

So it's all about taking them from struggles to strengths. It's a very Kind of mindset and just fun, focused way to work with dogs. So, for example, one of the concepts that I work on with Suni is calm disengagement, which is maybe self-explanatory, but because she gets so focused on things and she can't let it go, and so that's something that we actively work on, and so the way that we do that is I have two identical tug toys and we'll be playing with one and then I'll say switch and she has to let go of it to switch to the other one, and so we play that a lot and that has really helped her learn. Okay, disengaging from something may have a really good reward. On the other side it can be a really good deal. That's one of the games that we play.

Speaker 1: 31:16

I love that. You can learn so much through you know, Don't they do? They do that with children, right? They do play therapy with children a lot of the time I don't have, yeah yeah, plays here with children is sometimes goal-directed, but other times it's Like child.

Speaker 2: 31:33

Child centered play therapy, I believe it is is when the child just directs the play. It's a little bit more free play and it's looking at play as a language rather than, rather than, having specific interventions that you've set up right. So the play therapy is something I'm still learning a lot about. Him Definitely not an expert there but the other way is through having goals with play, similar to the dog training.

Speaker 2: 32:01

Yeah, one of the things that you can do Working with animals, right. So one of the things is using, like, for example, an agility tunnel and I learned this from Dr Elizabeth Hartwake's book on animal assisted interventions. But what you do is you have the child write down all of these fears they might have and they put them on the outside of an agility tunnel and then they guide the dog on how to go through the tunnel. They coach the dog on it and then afterwards you talk with them about how, how they might work through those struggles themselves to go through them, and so that's just kind of an example of how you can connect the dogs with play, with people to work through their struggles.

Speaker 1: 32:43

Yeah, right, I love that it's brilliant. What amazing work to Our dogs man. Yeah they really, they really, they're really so special. Yeah, how long does it take to become a therapy dog? How long are those programs?

Speaker 2: 33:01

It really depends on the dog. I would say most of the organizations require your dog to be at least a year old, and that's because it's really important what your dog be. A puppy yeah, I love that. Yeah, puppies need to be puppies. They don't need a lot of Strictness and forcing them into like this mold that you want them to be. They need the freedom to explore their work. The other requirement usually is that they've been with you for at least six months so that you've had time to really build that bond and that relationship, because it is so important in this work. Then, from there, it depends on the dog. Some dogs are ready right at one year. Some dogs have to go back and learn some things after they first try the test. They're waiting a little bit a lot of times, like doodles or golden retrievers or Labradors. They need a little bit more time to mature and they might not be ready till or whatever, around the time where they kind of start to calm down.

Speaker 2: 34:04

Exactly exactly because they can't jump up on people.

Speaker 1: 34:06

Yeah, exactly, they need to be very good right up until that time.

Speaker 2: 34:10

Yeah, yeah and you know it's important to let them do that on their time, like I've. One of the things I've really learned in training Sunny is when I try to go on my timeline it just doesn't work. We just both get frustrated. But if I Relax and work with her on her timeline which is usually not the same Then we're able to have Really just enjoy the journey, which I think is so important. That's great.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Yeah, that's so great. Well, thank you, sherry, I really appreciate this. Yeah, yeah, no problem, thank you.

Speaker 1: 34:54

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Baru podcast. If you'd like to learn more about therapy dog work, sherry has some great resources on her website, sherry Road comm. And, as always, if you enjoyed the episode, please don't forget to rate and follow the Baru Wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also follow us on Instagram at Baru podcast, and if you have a story of canine companionship that you'd like to share with me, or a question or even a comment, I would love to hear from you. You can email me, charlotte, at the barucom. All right, you guys, let's chat soon.