A nuzzle when it's needed most: Animals can help people in ways never imagined

When clinical psychologist Boris Levinson presented a paper in 1961 on the ways his dog Jingles had helped a withdrawn child, his colleagues literally laughed at him. One asked if he was going to share his fee with the dog.

But today nobody is laughing.

Animal-assisted therapy is generally accepted in many aspects of life — especially among the sick, disabled, lonely and troubled. Many hospitals involve animals as part of recreational, physical and speech therapy. One state, Montana, is so sold on the benefits of service dogs for the physically and mentally disabled that Medicaid is paying the $10,000 to $25,000 cost per dog for training.

At the center of this revolution is the Delta Society, a nonprofit organization run out of offices attached to an old airport hangar at the Renton airport. Founded in 1977 by Leo Bustad, the late quirky dean of the veterinary-medicine school at Washington State University, and Michael McCulloch, a Portland psychiatrist, the group is considered the leader in the field of the human-animal bond.

"McCulloch and Bustad were the heart and soul of this" movement, said biochemist Andrew Rowan, senior vice president of The Humane Society. From 1983 on, he said, Delta was "basically it" in pushing the bond into the mainstream.

The Delta Society has 6,500 therapy-pet teams visiting nursing homes, hospitals, hospices and schools in all 50 states and six foreign countries. Along with dogs, the society promotes therapy cats, rabbits, birds, chickens, hamsters, guinea pigs, goats, pot-bellied pigs and llamas. The Delta Society also runs the National Service Dog Center, a clearinghouse for anything to do with service dogs — how to get one, where to get training and what to do if a business won't allow service dogs inside. And it offers training to health-care professionals on how to incorporate animal-assisted therapy into treatment programs.

The Delta Society has a huge fan base, counting among its honorary board members Mary Tyler Moore, Betty White, Joanne Woodward and Annette de la Renta, the wife of clothing designer Oscar de la Renta.

As the group celebrates its 25th anniversary, the field is still battling for acceptance among insurance companies and many academics.

The stuff of movies

The stories coming out of the Delta Society are the stuff movies are made of. Actually some of the tales have been featured on HBO, Animal Planet, PBS and "Good Morning America."

Some of those stories came to life in May when six of the best service dogs and therapy-animal teams over the past 15 years were honored at a Delta Society conference at the Hilton Seattle Airport and Conference Center.

Mike Lingenfelter, struggling with major heart problems, called his service dog an angel with brown eyes and a furry tail. Lingenfelter, of Hampton Cove, Ala., said he was suicidal and depressed before he got Dakota, a golden retriever. But six months after getting the dog, he stopped taking antidepressants, and his fear of heart attacks lessened. The dog, who died in October, developed the ability to sense when Lingenfelter was on the verge of an angina attack, alerting him to take his medicine by pawing him. Lingenfelter said when an attack came on, he'd hug Dakota, calmed by her steady breathing. "I owe my life to the Delta Society," he said as the audience grabbed tissues.

In the Seattle area, animals certified through the Delta Society operate in dozens of facilities, including the Bailey-Boushay House, Providence Elder-Place, Valley Medical Center, Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center and Swedish Medical Center.

Ed Boyle, a spokesman for Swedish, said patients who don't want to walk because of a knee or hip replacement will take those steps if they can walk a dog. High-risk pregnant moms attached to monitors can actually see their blood pressure drop when a dog walks into a room, he said.

At the rehabilitation wing at Swedish's Providence campus, it's clear that the two dogs visiting on Tuesdays are boosting morale, greeting the patients with strokes, brain tumors and other diseases like long-lost relatives.

Agapé, a husky-yellow Lab mix named after a Greek word meaning love, is known as the big kisser. He leans into patients, hops onto an empty chair and gets eye level with his charge. Olga, a black Lab, lies like a baby in her owner's lap with her head resting on a patient's wheelchair.

"These folks are willing to love anyone," said Lindy Newell, a 48-year-old patient recovering from a flare-up of multiple sclerosis. "That's incredible."

Newell said she's been in and out of hospitals since she was diagnosed with MS at 20 and that being a patient is an isolating experience.

"I think these dogs are popular because they give patients love when they really need it," she said.

Better than babies

Andrew Roman, who was hired by Tufts University in 1983 to establish a program on animals in society, said there's no getting around the power of this bond.

"Some of these stories are so gut-wrenching you can't help but cry. This is the power of the animal-human bond. Obviously it's a good thing. But no one's going to give you money to study this."

He said in 1990 he gathered a blue-ribbon panel of experts — including a Harvard University gerontologist, a Boston University professor of nursing and a veterinary professor at Tufts University — to study the effects of pet therapy among the elderly, but he said their proposal was denied funding by the National Institute of Nursing.

Most of the studies on pet therapy, he said, have been small. The results have shown that pets can lower borderline hypertension, reduce anxiety and act as great social lubricators — more so than babies, Rowan said.

One of the biggest tests, conducted by Karen Allen, a researcher from the Department of Medicine at State University of New York, Buffalo, was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1996.

Allen recruited 48 people with severe mobility problems and put them in two groups of 24. One group was given service dogs. Members of that group showed an improved outlook on life, and their need for special care diminished, while the second group stayed at the same level. When dogs were given to the second group, they showed the same results.

But since that study, only one insurance provider, Medicaid in Montana, has stepped forward to reimburse for service pets.

"We are innovative here," said Richard Rough, regional program officer with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. He said the state has purchased 15 dogs over the past four years and calls the program "successful" in fostering home-based care.

One reason the state was interested in service dogs, he said, is that there is a shortage of personal-care assistants and nurses. He said the state is looking at ways to be cost-effective and provide choices, and service dogs provide another choice.

Funding dried up

When Delta Society started, it collected more than $350,000 from pet-food companies to conduct the initial research and publish its own scientific journal, Anthrozoos, because no one else would publish the findings, according to Linda Hines, president and chief executive.

But 10 years ago, these pet-food companies felt they had everything they needed to establish that the human-animal bond was strong, and funding for such studies has dried up, said Hines. Without the studies, the momentum toward legitimacy has slowed.

But the need is still huge, said Hines.

Of the 33 million people with severe disabilities in the United States, fewer than 20,000 have service dogs, said Hines. She said there is up to a seven-year waiting list for the animals.

The Delta Society is in the middle of a capital campaign to raise $14 million to fund an international training center and headquarters in Federal Way. The group has never had a training center so it hopes with the new facility, it can train a core of instructors, who will train thousands more.

Bobbi Nodell can be reached at 206-464-2342 or bnodell@seattletimes.com.