ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMS

Teaching a dog to activate a light teaches patience

ECAD has been able to accomplish our mission with the help of at-risk teens. ECAD created the Pet Assisted Learning Services (PALS) in March 1997. It has been very successful for both ECAD and for the agencies for which we work.

PALS teaches teenagers how to train dogs to assist people with disabilities. ECAD currently has PALS programs operating at four alternative schools servicing CT and NY. The schools specialize in helping children with emotional disabilities.

ECAD’s staff consists of four certified teachers, three volunteer aides, and many other volunteers who wear lots of hats. There are over forty teen trainers that are involved training dogs on a daily basis. ECAD has been able to reduce the cost of training assistance dogs and decrease the waiting time for the people who need these dogs. The kids have an opportunity to train Service Dogs, In-home Skilled Dogs, and Facility Dogs.

The kids have an opportunity to train Service Dogs, In-home Skilled Dogs, and Facility Dogs. A Service Dog (has public access) learns a vocabulary of eighty commands that enhance the individual’s mobility and independence. The training takes place in every situation possible: field trips to malls, grocery stores, movies, events, and much more. Once the dog is trained, the applicant attends thirteen days of team training. During that time, the student trainers teach the person to handle the dog and methods to continue to improve the dog’s skills for their individual needs.

Quite a few important things have been going on at ECAD.

We held several Team Trainings this summer, each one unique in its own way. One was specifically for children who couldn’t handle a Service Dog on their own but who would benefit from the attention of an Assistance Dog. We call these dogs “Skilled Dogs” and ECAD trained the mothers of the children to be the go-between for the dog and the child. For example, when the dog has to go outside, the moms were taught to have the dog bring the leash to their child. This cues the child to the dog’s needs. We also taught the dogs to bring their food dishes and toys directly to the child when they are hungry or want to play.

ECAD is thrilled to have received zoning approval for the construction of a new 5000 square foot Service Dog Training Center on the campus of Children’s Village. The Board of Trustees for the town of Dobbs Ferry has also approved the facility and we are awaiting approval from the Architect Design Board. I never realized all the steps it took to get a Training Center built! I am sure that everything will be approved and the project will begin to move forward...it just takes time. We will keep you updated as the project progresses.

Sincerely,

Lu Picard

Service Dogs – Assist physically disabled individuals by accomplishing multiple tasks, such as retrieving items, activating light switches, pulling wheelchairs, opening and closing doors and many other tasks specific to the needs of each individual.

Facility Dogs – Work in elderly housing, group homes, hospitals and school environments. These dogs assist with emotional and physical therapy.

Companion Dogs – Are placed in a home to provide emotional and social support. These dogs are cared for by other family members because of the limitations and/or ages of the recipients.

Social/Therapy Volunteer Testing – ECAD tests volunteers with their dogs to determine suitability for hospitals, elder care facilities and other institutions that are interested in providing a canine assisted therapy program.

Gratefully acknowledge:

ADVANTAGE RANCH

“Every child who comes needs to feel safe here; ADVANTAGE RANCH is a haven, a name with meaning. Each child who feels they have lived without an advantage can come here and find one. It is the cornerstone of our coaching paradigm: to see the ability in every child and help them see it in themselves.

Animals as Therapy

Benefit of Pets to Humankind

Epidemiology of Human-Animal Interactions: Zoonotic Diseases (Purdue U)

Epidemiology of Human-Animal Interactions: Health Benefits to Animal Ownership (Purdue U)

Health Cost Savings: The Impact of Pets on Australian Health Budgets The Australian NATIONAL PEOPLE & PETS SURVEY 1994 (N = 1011) showed that dog and cat owners make fewer doctor visits and appear to have better health than non-pet owners. It follows that the presence of pets in a majority of Australian households entails savings in health expenditure. This paper provides the first preliminary estimates of these savings. Eight per cent of GDP, over $30 billion, is spent on health care, of which 68% is government expenditure and 32% private. Our calculations indicate that the presence of pets could save between $790 million and $1.5 billion, annually, depending on whether it is assumed that only the main carers of pets enjoy health benefits, or whether other family members are assumed to benefit also. The paper outlines future research requirements which would enable more precise estimates of savings to be calculated.

Health Benefits of Animals ActionGuide (Delta Society)

Developing a Physiology of Inclusion: Recognizing the Health Benefits of Animal Companions
by James J. Lynch, Ph.D., Life Care Health

The first was the recent publication of my book The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness (Basic Books, 1977), in which I described how human loneliness had emerged, unseen and unappreciated, as one of the single most important contributors to premature death in America. Those who lived alone -- the single, the widowed and the divorced -- had death rates from all causes that ranged anywhere from 2 to 10 times greater than the rates of those who were married. Loneliness, it turned out, was a major contributor to heart disease, the single most important cause of death in America. (Detailed references to this and all other studies described in this review are on our web site: www.lifecarehealth.com.

The second event occurred a couple of years later, and involved a research study that I had conducted with Dr. Aaron Katcher and our colleagues. In that study, we uncovered the powerful influence that pet animals had on the long-term survival of heart patients released from a university Coronary Care Unit. This particular study was part of a much larger effort we had undertaken to find and develop useful clinical approaches to help effectively counteract the devastating health toll exacted by human loneliness.

We planned to follow a large group of heart patients for several years, and ask the question as to what determines long-term survival once these patients were released from a coronary care unit. While the question was simple enough, the study itself involved the analysis of hundreds of physical, social and economic variables. We made every effort to include every variable that might conceivably influence the long-term survival of these patients. Not surprisingly, the most potent factor influencing long-term survival was the extent of damage to the heart tissue itself. The greater the myocardial damage to the heart, the greater the risk of death within the year after release from coronary care.

Yet we were scarcely prepared to believe the second most important variable. Those heart patients who had pets had a far better chance of living than those who did not have pets. 78 of the 92 patients that we followed lived for at least one year, while another 14 patients died. Of the total group of patients, 58% reported that they had one or more pets, while 42% did not have any pets. One year later, after their release from the hospital, 28 of the patients without pets were still alive and 11 had died. Of those with pets, 50 were still alive and only three had died. It was a mortality pattern that stunned us. Four times more patients without pets had died within the first year, even though they comprised only 42 percent of the population! It was a landmark finding, and one that prompted us to pursue this remarkable influence further.

We also observed that when children read books aloud (whether in schools or at home or in the laboratory) their blood pressure increased, sometimes up to very precipitous levels. It was these observations that led us to study factors that might help to lower their pressure. The introduction of pet animals did the trick. Aaron Katcher and I, as well as other colleagues, studied 38 children and observed that the presence of a pet dog resulted in lower blood pressure both when the children were quiet as well as when they read a book aloud. A potentially inexpensive way to aid children to read had been suggested.

This brings me back to Rags, my daughter Kathleen, and that "Sixty Minutes" program. We intended to demonstrate this reading effect by having Kathleen sit all alone in a chair, be quiet for three minutes, read poetry for two minutes, then be quiet again for three minutes, after which we would place her pet dog on her lap. She exhibited the usual pressure increases while reading the book aloud, and then her pressure returned to baseline levels when she was quiet once again. And then Rags was placed on her lap, and just as soon as she began to stroke the dog, her pressure fell precipitously, down almost 50% from the peak recorded while reading the poetry, to an entirely new baseline level. Fifteen or 20 years earlier I had observed the exact same type of response from dogs studied in a laboratory at The Johns Hopkins Medical School. As soon as human beings petted the dogs, they too would react with highly significant reductions in their blood pressure. This type of vascular response was recorded not only in dogs, but also in horses and other species of animals. It took an additional two decades to recognize that very similar reactions occurred in human beings when they petted their animals. Animals reacted to touch, and human beings reacted as well, in very powerful ways.

The evidence was becoming overwhelming. Animals and the way we interacted with the rest of the natural living world had a truly profound effect on our hearts and blood vessels.

This led us to gradually begin to decode what I came to identify as the Language of the Heart. (Basic Books, 1985), as well as develop a concept that I now call the physiology of inclusion. This bodily reflex operates exactly opposite to the physiology of exclusion (see A Cry Unheard, Bancroft Press, 2000). In essence, dysfunctional dialogue, withdrawal from dialogue or in a social context where other people (and animals) are seen as a threat, triggers the repetitive activation of what physiologists long ago labeled as the "fight/flight response." This reflex, regulated by the autonomic nervous system, developed in higher mammals over the eons of evolution. Faced with meeting the proverbial saber tooth tiger or the wooly mammoths of old in the primeval forest, both human beings as well as non-human mammals had to have a way to react quickly to preserve their lives. Unfortunately, though the saber tooth tigers have long since disappeared, the human body still responds to symbolic threats as if they were the real things. It is the repetitive mobilization of such excessive fight/flight in situations that do not require such reactions, which eventually wears down the human body.

It was the development of new computerized blood pressure technology that revealed the surprising frequency of such reactivity in everyday dialogue and in everyday social interactions. These repetitive, undetected, and maladaptive fight/flight reactions, frequently wired in early in life by the experience of parental "toxic talk," or educational failure, would inexorably lead to physiological exhaustion. This in turn helped to create a biologically based need to withdraw from others for self-preservation. This communicative reflex of exclusion, would increase loneliness and social isolation, and ultimately lead to premature disease and premature death. And as noted elsewhere in A Cry Unheard, "dialogue that includes others -- a dialogue that did not respond to others, or the living world around them as a potential threat -- would activate the opposite type of physiological response, a Physiology of Inclusion, which is a biological state of enhanced relaxation. It produces physiological responses that do not merely bring the body back to baseline levels, but rather into a state of enhanced relaxation." This produces precisely the opposite physiological state, one that produces health and longevity. It is one that draws people out of themselves, closer to others in dialogue, rather than excluding and sealing them off.

Recent Discoveries About Our Relationships With The Natural World

Chapter from Compassion: Our Last Great Hope-Selected Speeches of Leo K. Bustad, DVM, Ph.D. Published by Delta Society, Renton, WA l996

Overview

Clinical observations and the results of recent research lend credibility to the centuries-old belief that the association of people with animals and the natural environment contributes to overall health and well-being. Recently we have "rediscovered" that a close relationship between people and the natural environment, most especially animals, is vital to the well-being of our planet, its inhabitants and its habitat. This relationship helps fulfill our inherent need to nurture. The roots of this relationship, often referred to as a "bond," go back thousands of years; but urbanization, industrialization, mechanization and other forces have caused the diminution of the opportunities for nurturing and affectionate interaction with people and our natural surroundings. This deprivation of nurturing opportunities has resulted in increased stress and consequent challenges to our health.

This unhealthy state of affairs is being vigorously addressed by many people in many disciplines with the object of helping to restore health to communities everywhere. We in the Delta Society and in our sister organizations in other countries are directing our efforts to these ends by exploring the interaction of people, animals and the environment through scientific study, service and teaching.

In the past two decades, research and clinical observations have shown that animal association may contribute to:

	Higher one-year survival rates following coronary heart disease (Friedmann et al, 1980; Friedmann and Thomas, 1995)
	Reduction in blood pressure and stress level in healthy subjects, as well as changes in speech pattern and facial expression , and lower plasma triglyceride and cholesterol levels (Baun et al., 1984; Katcher et al., 1984; Katcher, 1987; Wilson, 1991; Allen et al., 1991; Anderson et al., 1992)
	Improvement in quality of life for elderly persons (Robb, 1987; Stallones, 1990)
	Socialization of young children with their peers (Hart et al, 1987; Nielsen and Delude, 1989)
	Development of nurturing behavior and humane attitudes in children who may grow to be more nurturing adults (Melson, 1990; Ascione, 1992)
	A sense of constancy for foster children (Hutton, 1985)
	More appropriate social behavior in mentally impaired elderly people and prisoners (Burke et al, 1988; Jecs, Dawn, personal communication; Lee, David, personal communication; Hendy, 1984; Katcher et al., 1989)
	Success in psychotherapy sessions and in psychiatric institutions in helping patients work through their anxiety and despair (Peacock, 1984; Beck et al., 1986; Holcomb and Meacham, 1989)
	Improved balance, coordination, mobility, muscular strength, posture and language ability as a result of therapeutic horseback riding (ITRC, 1988; Biery and Kauffman, 1989; Dismuke, 1984)
	Reduction in the demand for physicians’ services for medically nonserious problems among Medicare enrollees, and an apparent buffering effect against psychological stress (Siegel, 1990; Siegel, 1993)
	Facilitation of social interaction between strangers (Hunt et al., 1992)
	Highly significant reduction in minor health problems and highly significant improvement in psychological components of general health, plus a dramatic increase in recreational walks by dog-owners (Serpell, 1991)
	Encouragement of preadolescents’ emotional reciprocity and caring responsibility, as well as lessening feelings of loneliness (Davis and McCreary Juhasz, 1995)

Those studying the interactions between people, animals and the natural environment find it very difficult to overestimate the significance of animals in the lives of people everywhere (Anderson, 1975; Anderson et al., 1984; Arkow, 1986, 1989; Fogle, 1981, 1983, 1986; IIRHPR, 1985; Katcher and Beck, 1983; Rowan, 1988; and Delta Annual Meeting Abstracts and the journal Anthrozoös). The number of animals in our society is impressive. At this time, the generally cited number of dogs in the U.S. is 55 million, and of cats 60 million. Determining the number of cats is especially difficult because many people feed free-ranging cats that are not officially claimed by anyone. In this regard, the number of stray and feral cats is estimated at 25-40 million. This number is not included in the owned population. Researchers are now addressing the problems inherent in estimating dog and cat populations and have proposed ways to arrive at more realistic population data (Patronek and Glickman, 1994; Patronek, 1995; Patronek and Rowan, 1995).

Even homeless men and women often contrive to maintain pets whose affection and companionship are highly important to them (Kidd and Kidd, 1994). This has been recognized in England, where the Hope Project was started in 1991 to provide veterinary services to homeless people with dogs, including vaccination, worming, flea prevention and free neutering (Kase, 1996). Beginning in London, this project has been extended to other cities.

	Compassion
	Integrity
	Divine Wisdom
	Creativity
	Consciousness

	Compassion
	Integrity
	Divine Wisdom
	Creativity
	Consciousness

	improving self-esteem and self-awareness;
	developing trust in a safe environment,
	providing social skills training,
	encouraging sensory stimulation and integration,
	combining body awareness exercises with motor planning and verbal communication,
	developing choice-making and goal-setting skills,
	developing sequencing and problem-solving skills,
	encouraging responsibility, and
	Promoting pro-social attitudes through care-giving experiences.

ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMS

Troubled kids gain confidence and skills training service dogs

ADVANTAGE RANCH

Deb Dyer, Executive Director

Recent Discoveries About Our Relationships With The Natural World

Overview

	Horses are sentient beings with feelings, thoughts, emotions, memories, and empathetic abilities
	Horses can be active facilitators, evoking emotions in those who work with and around them.