Therapy pets help people cope with tragedy through 'contact comfort'

Trained canines were used to comfort students as they returned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after 17 people were killed at the Parkland, Fla., school in February. They were also brought in after the mass shooting in Las Vegas last October and the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., two years ago.

"We naturally long to be connected to nature," said Cristina Strayer, who owns Animal Assisted Therapy of the Triangle. "[Therapy pets] give us that comfort, that contact comfort."

Strayer is a longtime advocate of the practice and was trained at the Animal Assisted Therapy Programs of Colorado and at Carolina Canines in Wilmington. She works with her therapy dog, Cookie, to provide help to people dealing with tragedy.

"Sometimes clients just want to be, and they want to sit and pet the dogs and relax their nervous system, and then they are ready to open up," she said.

According to multiple studies, including one from Virginia Commonwealth University, simply petting a dog increases serotonin and oxytocin, two hormones that improve mood, in the brain.

"People just light up when they see a dog," said Catherine Guy, who founded Retrieving Hearts, a group of therapy golden retrievers.

Guy takes the dogs all over the Triangle, visiting nursing homes and children dealing with serious illnesses. They visit the Ronald McDonald House in Durham once a month.

"The cards that are dealt to these children, they don't really know how to deal with it," she said. "The dogs come in, and they hug on them, they love on them. It's providing good social skills for them, and it's just really important."

Each of the Retrieving Hearts dogs is a former rescue dog that has been trained and certified for therapy work.

It's unclear how many therapy pets are in the U.S., but several organizations provide extensive training and testing to make sure animals have good manners and react positively to being touched by strangers before the groups certify them as therapy pets. Some also require the dog and handler to make supervised visits to schools or medical facilities where they must successfully interact with strangers in therapy-like settings before certifcation.

The animals don't receive the same level of training as service animals and cannot go places where animals are traditionally banned, such as restaurants. But that doesn't stop them from making a difference, especially after a tragedy.

"Finally, we are letting go of some ego and seeing that, you know what, animals are healers too," Strayer said. "They provide unconditional love, and sometimes we have to get out of the way."