Dogs help return to school for children who witnessed massacre in the USA

For some students in the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, Texas, starting classes this week came with feelings of fear and anxiety.

In May, Robb Elementary – which is now closed and may soon be demolished – was the scene of a shooting that claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers. Since then, some students have not felt comfortable returning to a classroom.

When parents dropped their kids off at school Tuesday morning, some students didn’t want to get out of the car – but 10 golden retrievers from across the country who work as emotional assistance dogs were on site, helping to ease their nerves. and provide a distraction, said Bonnie Fear, crisis response coordinator for the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dog ministry. This is a different return to school than the community has ever experienced.

“There was a lot of hesitation and anxiety about getting out of the car and going into the school. So we put the dogs outside, and I believe that helped some of the kids see the dog and calm down,” said Fear, whose team also provided support to the community immediately following the shooting in May.

The Uvalde school district invited the ministry to bring the dogs back to provide comfort during the first three weeks of school. The ten dogs will support eight schools; each dog has two handlers.

In some schools, animals ‘greeted’ students outside. On one campus, dogs sat silently in a counselor’s office to help students in need, Fear said, and at one high school, dogs were in a hallway.

“This will continue to change as needs arise, as children get into their routine – and where dogs are needed, counselors will instruct us where to go,” Fear said. “Our goal is to be there for those who are hurting and in need, and we show up and just stand with them in whatever they’re feeling.”

Emotional assistance dogs have been helping support communities affected by devastating gun violence for years. They were sent to Newtown, Connecticut after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.

The dogs were also flown to Orlando, Florida for comfort following the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting and to Parkland, Florida following the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Lutheran Church Charities K-9 ministry teams were at the scene of each of these tragedies.

“We are invited, we show up and let the dogs do their work,” Fear said.

“Animals can help alleviate fears and anxieties”

A growing number of studies suggest that spending time with an emotional assistance dog can help reduce a hospital patient’s experience of pain, and among college students, direct interaction with a dog resulted in greater declines in anxiety and improved mood. .

Of course, most experts emphasize that the benefit a pet or companion animal provides is complementary to the medical or psychological therapy the person receives.

“For those who have suffered trauma, dogs and animals in general can help facilitate the healing process. Animals can help alleviate fears and anxieties,” Angela Whittinghill, a child and adolescent behavioral therapist based in Jacksonville, Florida, at the pediatric behavioral health company Brightline, wrote in an email to CNN . She includes an emotional assistance dog in her own therapy.

As people heal after tragedies, a variety of supportive interventions, no matter how big or small, may need to be implemented.

“Returning to school after a tragedy like the one experienced in Uvalde, Texas, must be an extremely anxiety-inducing event for children and staff. Making therapy dogs available to them would be one of the best ways to help the wounds heal, a much better option than just providing talk therapy,” Whittinghill wrote.

Whittinghill, who was born and raised in Honduras, added that emotional assistance dogs can be especially beneficial to the Uvalde community, whose residents are predominantly Hispanic or Latino.

“Dogs are healers and these kids need healing, talking to strangers about our feelings is not something the Hispanic community is comfortable with,” she wrote. “In that case, therapy dogs would serve an even greater purpose.”

Dogs can sense when someone is upset or needs help, according to Julia Meyers-Manor, an associate professor of psychology at Ripon College in Wisconsin, who arrived at these findings in her research.

“We know that dogs can reduce stress through petting and even physical presence. We also know that animals can increase the frequency and willingness to accept therapy in children and adults,” Meyers-Manor wrote in an email to CNN .

“My research on empathy suggests that dogs are sensitive to human crying and seek to make contact with individuals who cry,” she wrote. “We know that dog empathy isn’t the whole story, as people find comfort even in stuffed animals, animal photos and even robotic animals.”

As for Uvalde, Meyers-Manor added that he thinks emotional assistance dogs can help community members, especially children, in times of stress and anxiety — but it’s important to keep in mind that some children may be allergic or fearful of allergies. dogs.

“We must be careful about the dogs we choose to use and how we implement them. […] Not every child is comforted by a dog,” she wrote. “When used as an optional part of the school day, I think they can bring a little joy to the kids.”

An emerging research area

The scientific literature on emotional assistance dogs dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, when American psychologist Boris Levinson presented an article to the American Psychological Association in New York about how “the importance of the pet” to humans was “psychological rather than practice”.

“He was a counselor of some sort. His dog was around — this was in the 1950s — and he started incorporating the dog into his work because the dog was helping to develop a therapeutic relationship with his clients,” said Colleen Dell, animal therapy researcher, physician, and professor at University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

Levinson has been described in research as “the first professionally trained clinician to formally present and document” the way companion animals can accelerate the development of a therapist-patient relationship.

However, the widespread deployment of emotional assistance animals — like the one seen in Uvalde and other tragedy or disaster scenes — remains relatively new, Dell said.

More research on this has emerged in the last decade, but it’s not definitive, she said. For example, some scientific studies suggest that peaceful interactions with a dog — such as petting the animal — can increase a person’s level of oxytocin, a hormone that reduces anxiety and blood pressure.

But “the few studies out there have mixed results. We have limited sample sizes and different ways researchers analyze their data and so on. This is not a bad thing at all. It’s just an emerging area,” said Dell.

“There’s so much going on in this natural type of relationship or communication or connection between the patient or the participant and the dog,” she said. “And so it’s not just the dog, there’s a handler there — and there really haven’t been any studies looking at the impact of that handler because they’re also mediating the impact.”

Overall, Dell said, she thinks that making emotional assistance dogs available to people who have been through a tragedy recently, like in Uvalde, can be beneficial if the person likes dogs.

“They’re going to be a distraction,” she said of the dogs. “So just at that level, it can have a beneficial impact. And the comfort and support that the dog can provide – they can hear, they won’t judge – that will be very important, especially for children.”