All Therapy Dogs are Champions!

EverythingDogBlog #53

Angel on a Leash: Therapy Dogs and the Lives They Touch*, by David Frei (Bowtie Press, 208 pp, 2011, $16.95)

All Therapy Dogs are Champions

I was so impressed by David Frei, Master of Ceremonies at a conference I recently attended (BlogPaws), that I thought I would finally purchase his book and give it a read. I had covered the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show several times so I recognized him as the ‘Voice of Westminster’ and had even sat in ‘his’ box during the Best in Show finals one year.  And, of course, I had heard about the therapy dog book Angel on a Leash, about the dogs of an organization founded in 2004 of the same name.

To put it mildly, I was blown away by Angel on a Leash!

What an incredible job these therapy dogs do, just by being themselves. They can intuitively become just the kind of dog the patient or resident needs: they give a paw, come close for petting, or snuggle to be kissed. (The human part of the therapy team is there just to observe and keep everyone safe and it is the human who needs the training class!)

Angel is beautifully-written and emotion-laden. “When a dog walks into a room, the energy changes.” Everyone notices the dog and the dog notices everyone. He is so happy to just be there that it rubs off on the humans – they all want a part of the dog – and dogs are happy to oblige! How true it is that “dogs are the great equalizers.”

Have you ever seen a more adorable logo than the Angels on a Leash logo above (courtesy DFrei)?

A Little Love Changes Everything

Have you ever known a cartoon to capture the spirit of anything better than Brian Narelle’s depiction of David Frei and his two goofy canine angels on a leash, replete with halos? (see above: courtesy DFrei) The caricature is so incredibly perfect and to the point without wasting a single pen stroke, that the caption is not needed: nevertheless, it adds mountains to the unforgettableness of Narelle’s talent and Frei’s pride in his dogs: A little love changes everything.

If you’ve seen David, even on TV, you will immediately recognize him, with his two dogs walking on air which is how they feel after paying a therapy dog visit to a hospital or other facility where they are so needed, welcomed and appreciated.

Angels on a Leash also tells us how Frei came to leave Seattle and land in New York City, how he was asked to be the voice of Westminster and also (with John O’Hurley) of the National Dog Show on Thanksgiving Day, how he met his wife. I usually take umbrage with the pages devoted to the human author in a book that is supposed to be a dog, but Angels devotes just the right amount of reading time so the reader appreciates how the therapy dog organization came to be

We learn so many things from our dogs – faithfulness and patience, responsibility and commitment, spontaneity, unconditional love, and how to read body language.

And I learned so much from this book, the most important being that the human part of the team should just stay out of the dog’s way when the dog is ‘working.’ The dog knows what to do - and when and how. It’s as if there is a new language that the handler is not privy to. The handler is there to guide, not lead; protect, not push.

The reader will learn the difference between Animal-Assisted Activities (AAA) and Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) as well as how service dogs and therapy dogs differ, legally.

Stories will make you smile, like the New York City taxi-driver who refused payment when he learned Frei and his dog were on their way to the hospital for a therapy visit.

Stories will make you cry like, oh, my – there were so many that it’s hard to pick out just one. . . .

Dogs truly do touch lives, in more ways than we can imagine – the lives of patients and families and even staff.

Thank heavens for angels - on a leash!

*I received this book at a conference.

PS – I am simply so smitten with the Angels on a Leash logo and the A Little Love Changes Everything cartoon that I do believe I will put them in a blog again but this time, all by themselves because the love of a therapy dog is unforgettable and stands alone. . . . . maybe on Wordless Wednesday.