Dogs in a Psychologist's Office
AKC Gazette July 1993

Taking on Troll, then Tess

Amos grew older, I acquired Troll, another yellow lab. Troll adored everyone, especially Amos. He was also a fine diagnostician. He could spot a paranoid personality on first sight and would get under the desk and hide during that session. He would not allow himself to be touched by such patients. Sometimes, I felt like getting under the desk, too, but troll got to act out his feelings while I maintained my therapeutic stance.

Unfortunately at 15, Amos died a peaceful death, a death Troll mourned so much that my vet suggested I get another dog for him. When Tess, an adopted Bouvier Des Flandres arrived people weren't sure what she was. Tess walked like a bear, looked like a buffalo and was gentle as a lamb. She immediately took over Amos' role as Troll's protector.

In group therapy, Tess instinctively moved to whomever was in the hottest seat and lay at that person's feet, sending the message of gentle protection. Tess had her own way of dealing with angry feelings both in the group setting and in individual treatment: when a patient got too angry, Tess passed wind. Perhaps it was her way of saying Lighten up, or Knock it off. Whatever, she drew a laugh or smile whenever it happened.

People often ask how I train the dogs to work with patients. What fascinates me is that I did not train any of the dogs to behave in the office. They all barked when the doorbell rang at home, but not in the office. They reacted differently to friends and patients. Instinctively, they knew how to behave with patients. This was particularly true of Humphrey and Amos. Troll learned from Amos, as Tess did from Troll. Certainly, I must have sent out my own non-verbal signals indicating my expectations of them‹to which they complied.

Patterns of Touch

As the years passed and I continued to develop as a therapist observing patients interacting with dogs, I came to an important realization: Not only did the dogs react to the patient's emotional states, but the patients reacted to the dogs by reaching out to touch them. I am continually amazed by the respect dogs give to human grief and pain.

Gradually, I became aware of patterns in the times patients reached out for the dogs and touched them. Many did so when they were in need of comfort. Others made contact with the dogs when they didn't want to go into an area we were dealing with more deeply didn't want to know about an issue, or claimed they couldn't remember. I started to note where they touched the dogs these times: on the head, the chest (heart), the ears, the tail, the genitals.

I started to play out a hunch. If the patient touched the dog's chest, I would say, "I see you are touching Troll's heart. Is there anything happening in your heart?" Patients would then attend to what they were experiencing in their body and report feelings they were previously unaware of: "I feel my heart is broken but I don't know why?"

I came to realize that patients are touching the dogs where their own feelings were housed, if not emotionally experienced. An individual's body holds thoughts and feelings it experienced before that person could speak. The body also holds pieces of a person's history that are too painful to be kept in the memory.

I have developed some general correlations between the places a patient touches a dog and the emotion not being expressed by the patient. For example, the heart correlates to feelings of loss or abandonment; the feet to \feelings of being trapped; the eyes to a sense of sadness and desperation; the ears to not having been listened to; the throat to anger; and the tail and genitals to erotic feelings. When a patient asks for a dog's paw, issues of control are being raised. When the patient allows the dog to lick him, issues relating to breast feeding or inadequate nurturing are surfacing.

Much of what we bring into therapy is our own self-loathing, our projections, our denials and our magic thinking. We all received messages in childhood that dented our self esteem. Because there is such humiliation in these messages, we often project them onto others to spare ourselves the pain of reliving them. I have learned that the dogs may receive one set of my patient's projections while I receive another: "Humphrey doesn't want to be here todayŠHumphrey seems angryŠHumphrey is bored listening to meŠ"

These projections often cary built-in transference reactions related to people in the patient's past. Generally, patients project their more negative and scary feelings onto the dogs rather than because they find it less threatening to do so. At the same time, there may be a message relating to how they were treated by a parent or signifcant person in the past.

I have also found that the more painful or abusive the patients' early years, the more he reacts both positively and negatively to the dogs. When a patient says, "I can't concentrate, the dogs are bothering meŠ" I wonder out loud whgether the patioents' parents listened and paid attention to him. I might also wonder who was the favorite in the patient's family.

Fergus and Elodie
Tess and Troll died with months of each other: Troll, at 5, of lymphoma; Tess , at 10, of an inoperable brain tumor. Among my patients, reactions to their deaths were mixed, but feelings of loss and grief abounded.

Once again, when the office felt too big, the kids weren't getting their messages accross to me and the group felt that the "family" wasn't complete without a dog. I acquired Fergus, a yellow Lab puppy. Watching him develop from such an ea4rly age, patients wondered about their own developmental stages of learning and maturation.

When I acquired Tess, I joined the american Bouview Des Flandres club and volunteered to work on the rescue league. When Fergus was about 10 months old, I was asked to visit a year-old litter of six to assist in placing them. One Bitch would not let go of me. I decided if Fergus Liked her, I would take her. He did, so did I.

Elodie was afraid of women, and as a result, was formidable of raising women's issues in treatment. Many patients had never heard of a dog that was afraid of women. In therapy group, issues rose between among the men and women about how a dog could be afraid of women, causing them to question the stereotype that all women are warm and nurturing. Elodie adjusted to females over time, but has been worth her weight in gold in bringing women's' issues to the fore.

Dogs love to work at what they do best and derive pleasure from your pleasure with them. What has become clear to me is how much all the dogs I've owned instinctively knew what people needed. Dogs touch are basic instinct perhaps by letting us focus on the simplicity of their lives. For many people, a relationship with a dog is the first they experience without ambivalence and the one that translates into an immediate knowledge and experience of belonging together.

As I look back over the past 22 years, I can still recall bringing Humphrey to the office for the first time as if it were yesterday. Having Humphrey in my life gave me great pleasure and taught me to be an observer of human -animal interactions. His interaction with patients forced me into thinking about problems and issues that could not be fathomed from theory and textbooks. Humphrey and his successors have given me the gift of new diminution in my work and an involvement in he dog world that has enriched my life.

I began this article as a tribute to Humphrey, Amos, Troll, Tess, Fergus and Elodie. It has concluded with reliving my joy in knowing them and deeply appreciating their contributions to the successful outcomes in the lives of many of my patients.