Some places pretend to care about people, the people in my dentist’s office do. They are just uniformly lovely and competent as well, and I do not have a long history of loving my dentists.

I have been training Zinnia there with her therapy dog, and today, Zinnia was teaching me. I had a brief visit to Ariel, a dog lover, and super tech and a warm and efficient person. She has a photo of Red on her wall, and a postcard of Zinnia (everybody there has a postcard of Zinnia on their wall).

I left Zinnia at the reception desk, and after a few minutes, she tracked me down, came into the cubicle where I was lying, and lay down next to me. She had no leash, and I had given her no commands.

As we were leaving, a young girl came out with her mother. She was wary of Zinnia at first, but her mother sat down next to her, and Zinnia sat down on the other side (again, no commands.)

It’s hard for me to describe how much pleasure it gives me to see a scene like this, in a minute or say the child reached over to Zinnia and pet her gently on the head. Zinnia stayed perfectly still.

I just put up my hand for a “stay” command.

She didn’t move towards the girl.

She didn’t jump on her.

She stayed perfectly still until the girl was finished and started to walk away. She turned to her mother and smiled.

There is a part of therapy work you can train for, and a part that has to be natural and intuitive. People are always approaching a dog like Zinnia, and I have to trust my dogs 100 percent to do this work.

There is no room for error.

You can so easily frighten a child and make them fear dogs their whole lives. A child like this can be so easily knocked over, scratched or frighten. This work involves a lot of training, but the first element must be trust.

I know 100 percent that Zinnia will not harm a child, or an elderly person, or anyone else who comes near her. The photo shows where training stops and the heart of the dog takes over.

Zinnia is 16 weeks old, but she knew exactly what to do. The heart sings.