Animal-Assisted Interventions for Emotional and Mental Health

Conversations with Pioneers of the Field

Cynthia K. Chandler, Tiffany L. Otting, Cynthia K. Chandler, Tiffany L. Otting

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815395096
• eBook ISBN: 9781351113779
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Animal-Assisted Interventions for Emotional and Mental Health provides a unique opportunity to learn from a variety of leaders in the field. Leading scholar Dr. Cynthia Chandler and colleague Dr. Tiffany Otting present interviews with pioneering experts from the U.S., U.K., Israel, India, and Hong Kong, revealing key beliefs, values, and ideas that are fundamental to animal-assisted interventions. Their words will inspire and guide current and future generations of practitioners, teachers, and researchers.

Part I
U.S. and U.K.

1 Dr. Aubrey Fine of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Dr. Aubrey Fine is well known for his work in the field of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs). He has written several books and presented at a great number of professional venues. One of his best-known works is editor and contributing author of the landmark book Handbook on Animal-Assisted Therapy: Theoretical Foundations and Guidelines for Practice. Dr. Fine is professor in the College of Education at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California, and has served as practitioner in Claremont, California. He is a member of the American Psychological Association. He has spent decades practicing, teaching, researching, and writing in the field of AAI. Some of the animals he has worked with include a gerbil named Sasha, dogs PJ and Magic, a cockatoo named Tikvah, and a bearded dragon lizard named Aussie. Also, Dr. Fine is an experienced magician and often incorporates magic tricks into his practice.

The interview I conducted with Dr. Aubrey Fine, on October 10, 2015, serves to preserve some of the ideas and attitudes of a foremost pioneer in the field of AAIs (see Figure 1.1). Some of the sources he refers to in the interview are listed in the references at the end of the chapter.

Interview with Dr. Aubrey Fine

Cynthia: We are here in lovely Pomona, California, at California State Polytechnic University. We are visiting with Dr. Aubrey Fine, who is a professor in the College of Education. Thanks for joining us today.

Aubrey: Thanks. I’m honored to be here.

Cynthia: The honor is ours. Please tell us about how you got started in animal-assisted therapy and some of the activities that you’re involved in.

Aubrey: Okay. I’m asked that question and I always giggle because I’ll even tell you, before I got involved in any of this, I grew up being afraid of animals. Never had an animal in my life. My mom really didn’t like dogs and cats so that fear factor was brought upon me. It’s amazing that my life was changed.
I always think back of the first dog, and then I’ll tell you how I got involved. I never forgot as years went on, although I was apprehensive about dogs, I finally felt that I was ready. My friends had golden retrievers and we [my wife and I] talked about it. We had our first son 34 years ago, and slightly after that son was born, we really just began to talk more about having a dog. Although, when you think about having two babies in a house, a human baby and a puppy, it was an interesting experience. Anyway, I remember the first time we got a golden retriever. It was really funny. Today, I would have never purchased a dog like this, but we were in front of a store and a lady had one golden retriever in a basket. She said that she had sold all of the puppies. She had one left that was sold, but someone said they couldn’t pick it up. She wanted to keep it, and her husband said no. I never forgot when I was in front of that woman with the dog, I looked at my wife and said, “Could we have the dog?” It was almost like I became a five-year-old all over again because she said to me, “But it’s a major responsibility.” I said, “I know that and we’ve talked about this,” but she wanted reassurance, so I kept on doing what a five-year-old would tell a parent. I was “yes” to everything, so when she said, “Who’s going to take care of this dog when it wakes up in the middle of the night?” “I will!” Went through this whole process and then she said to me, I never forgot this, she said, “Well, if we get one, if we get this puppy, always remember we’ll never have more than one in our family at one time.” Of course, that never really came true. We’ve had a wealth of animals in our home that has enriched our family’s life. In retrospect, all the other dogs we’ve ever got since then, you know there’s a lot more thought about how you get the dog, but that was my rookie experience with dogs.
How I got into this field was serendipitous. I was a young college student in Canada and, again, I gave you the story of my mom not liking animals. My first attempt of having a pet was to get a small rodent. Originally, it was a mouse and when I came home, I remember having the cage and everything all ready and she was in a small container, my mother was screaming, “It’s a rat. Don’t drop it. Don’t drop it.” She got me so nervous, and she wasn’t ready, that I said, “No, no, no. This isn’t going to work.” I went back to the store and said, “Listen, I’m only giving you back the animal right now, not because I’m giving up on this. I’m going to keep the cage and everything; just give me two or three more weeks to get my family more prepared.” He understood and it was fine, but I ended up not getting a mouse. I got a gerbil [Sasha].
At that time, I was a student at a university in Canada, and I was also working in developing a social skill-based program for kids with learning disabilities. This was a large program I coordinated, at probably 80 or so children. You have to look that this is now 1973, long time ago. Number one presenting concern was learning disabilities. We used that term to explain children that today would have ADHD, Tourette syndrome, highly functioning autism, Asperger’s. So lots and lots of disorders that were involved in this project. Once I started to get to know my pet, Sasha, all I was going to do was bring Sasha in as my share of the program. I designed the social skill-based curriculum that we were using.
I never forgot a little boy. I tell this story so often that a little boy, who today would have been diagnosed for sure with ADHD. Highly, highly impulsive. He looked at me and said, “Can I hold her?” Now, you have to understand that Boris Levinson [1962, 1969] was doing this work in New York the decade before, yet still not very popularized in regards to mainstream knowing about this. So I had no idea what animal-assisted interventions were. What happened was, when I brought Sasha into share and the boy said, “Can I hold her?” I said, “Sure.” I said, “But there’s some rules. I’m going to put her in your hands and you have to promise that you’re going to be gentle.” So there was this boy and Sasha, in her own gentle way, first sniffed his palms, and he smiled. Then she gradually went on his tummy. He looked at me with the greatest smile on his face and he said, “I told you I won’t move.” That was one of the first times I noticed how in control of his behavior he was. Sasha ended up becoming the mascot of that program. She came often. Kids built habitats for her. They made posters for Sasha.
That was my indoctrination to a field that didn’t have any identification to me. I had no idea what I was doing. It was only a little while later that I heard of a gentleman named Boris Levinson, who was doing something similar with a dog. Then, of course, I started hearing little bits of information. I began doing this without any training. But as a young student interested in becoming a psychologist and throughout my career, I’ve always tried to, one, think of how to interact with patients in ways that make my connection with them easier.
When I was young I learned magic. I’m actually an amateur magician, I guess. I did that, not because I wanted to be a magician, but more so that when you do magic tricks with children it really gets their interest. It took me a very quick amount of time to realize that the animals I brought into working with children weren’t magic tricks. They deserve the integrity, the respect, the admiration of people like me to ensure their welfare and care. Even early on I began to get the message, as much as I care about the children that I work with, I really have to make sure that everybody is safe and having a quality experience.
That’s how I began. And it’s been an evolution of over 40 years now that I’ve used a variety of animals. Although I told you about the dog story, the reality is I primarily used small animals first: gerbils, bunny rabbits, guinea pigs. Then I went from that to actually using birds. I got trained by a pretty renowned person that knew bird behavior that helped me understand what kind of birds to get. I began using small birds, like lovebirds, that I hand fed. Cockatiels, conures, which I found extremely helpful. Dusky conures are not as noisy. Then, of course, I got into working with cockatoos. All of these animals before my first therapy dog, whose name was Puppy. That’s sort of an interesting thing because if you’re looking at organizations, like Pet Partners [n.d.] for example, of the 10,000 plus registered teams, almost 9,800 of them are teams that consist of a handler with a dog, not a handler with a bird or other species. I got into doing this a little bit differently, but again it’s the connection, how you use that connection with the animals and get that connection with the clients.

Cynthia: You’re a leading figure in this field. You’ve made a lot of contributions. You have a leading book, Handbook on Animal-Assisted Therapy. Most of us in the field are very familiar with your book. What would you say the value of animal-assisted interventions is?

Aubrey: We can define the term animal-assisted interventions as having different dimensions like animal-assisted therapy, animal-assisted activities, animal-assisted education, because this area has expanded. But to your question, “What is the contribution that animal-assisted interventions provides?” is a very large question. I think I can break it up in a variety of ways.
One, I see animal-assisted interventions as being a complementary therapy. It’s used by a skilled clinician. I think to do this work, number one, you have to be credible in a lot of fronts. You need to be a good clinician and understand the etiologies and the pathologies that you’re working with and know how best to help your clients become better. How you do that is an important process. Some people use cognitive approaches. I use a lot of cognitive behavior therapy in the work that I do, but I also use a variety of other ways, and since I primarily work with children I try really hard to make that engagement a valuable experience for them. That’s where animals really fit.
Your question is how has animal-assisted interventions supported the work? I think that animals, of course, when you look at the pioneer work of the Corson’s [Samuel Corson and Elizabeth O’Leary Corson (1975)], animals truly act as a social lubricant if they’re really comforting in working with people. If they’re comfortable in doing this, it gets the people to want to engage.
Knowing how to incorporate animals in therapy is probably the first step of getting to this equation of how it can be helpful, because in reality, what was initially found when the Corson’s talked about a rippling effect, the fact that having animals in an environment changes that environment, it really does. In the work that I initially started with the little boy and so many other people since, having an animal that demonstrates a sense of comfort and warmth engages them to want to engage with me.
You need to know how to do this, though, because sometimes kids can hide behind what I would call a “body of fur,” and then you can miss the information that you want to use or get to. I think of so many examples. I think of children I’ve worked with that are depressed. I think of a young girl that I worked with early on with one of my early therapy dogs, and she was selectively mute. When she came to visit me, she was a kindergartner, and basically she didn’t talk in school. When she was in preschool, no one made a big deal of this because she talked fine at home. When visitors would come in to the home, they just said, “Well, my daughter’s shy,” but when she went to school, they realized that this is a problem. She’s not talking to teachers, she’s not talking to kids, so I was referred to this youngster.
Typically I don’t meet children the first visit; I always talk with their parents first so the youngsters don’t feel uncomfortable. That day, they brought her, and ironically, like most times, Puppy, that was the therapy dog at that time, would just walk down the hallway and greet you. Puppy started greeting this girl and she smiled and chuckled, and eventually I had Puppy come back about eight or 10 feet. I looked at the girl because you could see it in her eyes she wanted the dog back. I just said to her, “Honey, all you have to do is say, ‘Puppy, come.’” Of course, the parents are looking at me and saying, “This isn’t going to happen,” but it did. It was the cold nose, warm heart of a golden retriever that may have caused that.
I told the parents we weren’t going to have our meeting because I had already started something. They went into a different room and I sat on the floor. I’m not saying the girl talked a lot, but we interacted, and over a course of time we got her to talk with me and the dog. That wasn’t enough, because did I change the behavior in school? No. We now needed to figure out what we could do to make that happen. I said to her, “Would you like Puppy to visit you and your teacher?” For the next several visits we practice, “Well, if Puppy comes, how are you going to introduce her? What are you going to do when we bring the lunch, and how are we going to make sure Puppy has a snack?” Then, of course, that was the first time the teacher heard that child’s voice. We reengaged that situation again with children on a playground.
The comment that I’m giving to you is that, number one, people have always asked me, this is going back a long time ago, “Could you have probably got that child to talk without your dog?” And the answer probably is yes. I’ve worked with children with selective muteism, but on that given day, it was her engagement that acted as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I U.S. and U.K.
• Part II Israel
• Part III India and Hong Kong