By Lisa Kettler
”Can I pat your dog?”, people ask when Tilly is wearing her Therapy Dogs Australia bandana. And my answer is almost always “Yes! She would love that!” And instantly, Tilly, and by extension, myself, have made a new connection with someone. The ice has been broken, and the awkwardness that often surrounds talking to a complete stranger or casual acquaintance, has gone.
Within moments, a comfortable conversation has begun, based on getting to know more about Tilly, but so often moving within a sentence or two, to connection building between the humans. Small snippets of personality, story telling, opinions, experiences and more are being shared, like: “Oh, my dog would be jumping all over us! He’s a kelpie and he’s crazy, but we love him”. I have learned more, and more comfortably and authentically, about other humans in some of the five minute conversations initiated by connection with Tilly, than in much longer meetings or social events. Better still, people leave the interaction with a smile on their face, and often tell me if I see them again, that they experienced a lift in their mood or felt an improved capacity to deal with the difficult things in their day, as a result of the interaction with Tilly.
In a training or workplace setting, the effect is magnified, as people visibly relax and start talking not only to me, but to each other about Tilly. Once the connection has been established, it is so much easier to talk about other things. Tilly herself does not demand conversation back from whoever she is interacting with, and makes her own choices about who to approach and for how long, so even the most reserved and quiet people in the room can feel a sense of engagement and connection.
Therapy dogs have a very specific role, that is different to the role of a service or assistance dog. While an assistance dog is trained to help a single person with things like tasks of daily living, medical alert, community access, regulatory support or emotional support, a therapy dog is trained to work with their handler ( in this case, me) to provide a service to others. Therapy dogs may be found working with their handlers, most commonly in health, community or education settings, bringing connection, comfort, and joy - one paw, tail wag or soulful look at a time.
In our case, Tilly and I work together part time at Flow Psychology, and on other days, we are available to provide Workplace Paws wellbeing visits for teams working in offices, health, service and education settings. We both love this role, and I value providing a service which has benefits backed by a growing research evidence base.
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