As dogs have moved from the periphery of our lives to the very center of our emotions and feelings, the Therapy Dog has grown in number and popularity. Psychologists have known for years that animals can heal people and make them feel better but it is only recently that the Therapy Dog has mushroomed quite so dramatically in popularity. I’ve been to nursing homes where dogs appear daily but relatives are rarely seen, administrators remark on it all of the time.

This phenomenon has to do both with dogs and people, I think. Dogs do make sick people feel better, but they are also making the rest of us feel better about ourselves.  That’s why there are so many bumper stickers that read “Caution: Therapy Dog On Board,” because many of us are looking for ways to feel better about ourselves as human beings.  As we have emotionalized our dogs and projected our own neuroses, frustrations and ambitions unto them, is is very easy to become confused about the true nature of dogs and the motives and methods of the therapy dog. This makes training complex.

I realized early on in my hospice work that hospice therapy was not something Izzy needed to do – he was quite happy to be at the farm, riding alongside my ATV and hanging out with the sheep. It was me who needed to do the therapy work, it was me who needed to feel good about myself by doing good, and me who needed to heal myself and  to re-connect to human beings in the way working with hospice patients can very powerfully do. I was always, from the first, careful not to put my needs and issues onto Izzy, he was very happy to do the work I wanted him to do.

I get lots of nice messages – I like nice messages – thanking me for the work Red and I are doing in veteran’s homes, and many of those messages praise Red as a dog with a wonderful and noble heart, a dog who wants to heal, do good and help veterans. “God bless Red,” wrote one man to me this morning, “he has such a noble heart, he does so much good.” These messages are gracious and warm, but they also give me pause.

I have been so far successful in training my therapy dogs, and it is good and  hard work, and it never stops, and a very important part of this work for me is understanding what it is the dog wants and needs to do and what it is that I want and need him to do. That means grasping his true motives and separating them from mine, although they are very much entwined. In our time, we have come to worship animals like dogs, and increasingly, we are unhappy with human beings. This is a profound shift from the way our forefathers looked at life, the way the great philosophers considered life.

Red is a wonderful dog, but he is a dog. He does not especially care about veterans, or the aging, or dementia patients.  He is not seeking to heal the wounds human beings inflict on one another, or that life delivers to us. Red is trained to work, he loves to work, and he loves to work with me. He is a border collie used to using his eyes to control sheep, so he has the border collie gift – as do many working dogs – of making eye contact and  holding it. This is a powerful gift in therapy work because patients looking into the dog’s eyes see this connection, and feel that the dog is loving them and caring for them. For a lonely patient in a nursing home, that is a profound gift.  In the context of dementia wards and nursing homes and on the edge of bed’s in hospice patient’s homes, it has an enormous impact on the people experiencing it.

For Red to be the therapy dog I want him to be, it is not his heroism that needs praise, it is his eye contact that needs encouragement and reinforcement. Because that – not our projection of motive – is what makes an effective therapy dog in my opinion. There are other ways – being hugged, just walking down a hallway – dogs can also do great work, but Red’s kind of work is the work I am drawn to. It is one-on-one, soul-to-soul work.

What the patient believes the dog is doing is also, if we are being honest, not always entirely true. Red has no noble motives, really, he can sense emotion but has no grasp of what a veteran or dementia patient has endured, he has no language or consciousness to take such a sophisticated moral step. It is my need that draws us to this work, not his. Red is never happier than when he is herding sheep, he could live quite contentedly without therapy work. He does for me, at my command.

Like many dogs, Red responds to attention, and he responds to need. He also responds to me and to the cues and reinforcements I give him – nods, smiles, murmurs of “good boy,” hand signals – all the signs of affirmation I am giving him that the nurses and patients don’t see. It is very similar to the training Red has received in our herding work.

I write this about training, really, and because it’s important. For Red, it is work, not nobility. The work is the reward, he does not need treats, I love and admire him, but I don’t project nobility on him. He is reinforced for walking straight up to the patient, making and holding eye contact, allowing himself to be touched, rubbed or petted, to be spoken to. Red clearly picks up on the affection and enthusiasm he is receiving, that is a reward, and  one I reinforce constantly. He is very conscious of my approval.

But the emotional stuff, the motives, that’s on me. I am not a hero either. I do therapy work to feel better about myself, and to contribute the talents of this remarkable animal to people who are lonely or disturbed or ill or in need. This is good for me, it heals me, it helps me in my own work to evolve as a human being, to give of myself to others as I can. When I began hospice volunteer work, I was frightened and depressed and in great need, and this work helped ground me, build a center, strengthen my view of myself, and yes, help other people. Red’s great instincts help him connect to people, and it is my obligation to bring  him to this work.

But I don’t want to fall into the emotional quicksand of emotionalizing my dogs. Truth is important, authenticity is central. Red does not know what a veteran is, does not understand the meaning of death and dying, he does not get up in the morning and grasp what wars are, or how they damage people. That is a human task, a human understanding. I train him to to this work as to do any other. He doesn’t need vests and scarves, bumper stickers or collars (he does need an ID, for sure).

As the new work of dogs evolves into supporting the sometimes fragmented and disconnected lives of contemporary humans, it is more and more important to recognize the wonder and truth of their animal nature, and separate it from ours. They are not like us, they do not see the world the way we do, an idea that is being overwhelmed by our love for them. This is essential in my mind to training a good therapy dog, who never thinks of himself as a hero, but who does his job faithfully and well, as he or she is trained to do.