Ziegner’s dog Scout offers comfort through animal therapy

Ziegner’s
dog Scout offers comfort through animal therapy
…………………………………………………………………

JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News Staff

They’ll
keep your secret love of Spam to themselves. They don’t
care if you have love handles. They’ll shower you with
kisses even when you have toe-curling morning breath. No
wonder dogs have long been referred to as “man’s
best friend.”

Sherry Ziegner,
executive associate in the provost’s office, can attest
to the values of canine companionship. For four years now
Ziegner has been a witness to the amazing responses inspired
by her five-year-old golden retriever, Scout, as they conduct
animal-assisted therapy as part of Caring Critters, an organization
of pets and pet owners who visit hospitals, nursing homes
and other health care facilities.

As the patients
pet, talk to or just watch the visiting animals, which can
range from dogs and cats to birds, guinea pigs and even
a hedgehog and a pygmy goat, the responses, especially those
from the Alzheimer’s patients, are unbelievable, Ziegner
said.

Ziegner, a member
of the Staff Advisory Committee, recalled one visit to Garden
Village, an assisted living facility in southwest Houston,
during which she, Scout and a few other dogs and cats were
sitting with three ladies, one of whom was asleep at the
end of the sofa. “The sleeping woman woke up and saw
these animals, and I don’t know if she thought they
were children or if she knew they were animals, but she
started singing a lullaby to them,” Ziegner said. “She
had the most beautiful voice, and the animals just loved
it. After she sang to them she petted each of them on the
head and said ‘I love you’ to each of them. It
just brought tears to my eyes.”

During another
visit Ziegner met a man who was about her age. “I don’t
know why he was in there. He wouldn’t speak, but he
would always pet Scout. Then after the second or third visit,
he was petting Scout and he was trying to say something.
It took him a while to say it but he finally got out that
he used to have a lab.”

Even though
he wasn’t able to verbalize much, Ziegner said the
pleasure he got from seeing and interacting with the animals
was obvious, and it’s that response that Ziegner said
makes this emotional work so gratifying.

“Some of
the people you see can carry on a conversation, and you
wonder why they’re in there. Then others you don’t
know if they really know what’s going on but you get
a response from them,” Ziegner said. And then there
are those who simply look forward to the social contact
of the monthly visits.

Ziegner recounted
one of her and Scout’s first visits to an assisted
living facility. “One of the little ladies was petting
Scout and the other dogs and cats, and she said, ‘You
know, your family and friends forget to come visit you,
but I can always count on the animals to come see us.’”

As heart-wrenching
as some of the visits can be, Ziegner said she rarely has
questioned whether she could continue, although she said
it is difficult to return to a facility and learn one of
the patients with whom they regularly visited has died.

“You don’t
think you get attached to these people,” she said.
“There have been several people who have passed away,
and although you know they’re going to go, it’s
just a shock.”

It was a chance
encounter with Caring Critters that got Ziegner and Scout
involved in animal-assisted therapy.

“My husband
and I were at the dog show not long after I had gotten Scout.
Caring Critters had a booth set up there, and they just
happened to have a golden retriever like Scout, so we stopped
and talked to them,” Ziegner said. “Later my husband
and I talked about getting involved because Scout is such
a mild-mannered, calm dog, and we thought this would be
something that would be good to do.”

From the start,
Scout proved that Ziegner’s intuition was right on.
Ziegner said that during the mandatory temperament testing
for the animals, Scout was exposed to several scenarios
that he might encounter during a visit, from a person approaching
loudly with a walker to someone with a mobile IV. She said
that even when a volunteer acted as an aggressive patient
screaming to “get that dog out of here,” Scout
calmly turned to look at Ziegner as if to say “What
is wrong with this person?”

Scout loves
people, Ziegner said, and she credits him with helping people
come out of their shells.

At a Sharpstown
psychiatric hospital, they visited a group of children who
were patients, including one little girl who was scared
of Scout. During the visit, Scout patiently sat as the girl
gradually warmed up to him. “By the time we ended the
visit, she was sitting down on the floor, hugging him like
he was a big old teddy bear,” Ziegner said.

Their ability
to connect with the patients transcends even language, Ziegner
said. “We’ve gone into rooms where the patients
can’t speak any English, but they see the animals and
that doesn’t matter.”

She noted that
even physical separation poses no barrier. “We were
visiting Ben Taub’s Children’s Intensive Care
Unit and there was a boy who had severe asthma, so we couldn’t
go into his room. But he wanted to see the animals so badly,”
Ziegner said. She tapped the sill of the large observation
window to his room and Scout placed his paws on it, positioning
himself so the boy could see him through the glass. “The
little boy was overjoyed at getting to see the dog,”
Ziegner said.

It’s responses
such as this that keep Ziegner and Scout going back. “I
could never quit now,” Ziegner said. “Scout keeps
me going back because he loves it so much.”