BREWER’S TRUE STORIES OF ANIMAL
THERAPY
I teach in a very unique high
school where all the students know and care about each
other and their teachers. Recently, a well-loved
student died in a tragic accident on a Friday night.
After speaking with my principal, we decided that I
should bring my Pet Partner Erika to school early on
Monday morning and be there as the students arrived. I
was trained as a grief counselor several years ago, but
I have only recently started to use my dogs to help
people begin the grieving process. As our students
arrived, the faculty met them in the parking lot; I had
to tell some of my students that their friend had been
killed in a ‘freak” accident and reassure them that no
drugs or alcohol had been involved. It was a difficult
time for all of us. Most of our students are 15 to 18
years old, and many have experienced more losses than
most adults have.
Erika worked from 7:30 that
Monday morning until 4:00 that afternoon. She did not
have a minute all day away from students; when we went
out for potty breaks, students went with us. They
petted her, the used her as a pillow, they brought her
water, they shared their food with her, and they cried
into her fur. Never once did she pull away or ask to
leave.
When two students curled up
against her for comfort, she did not move for over an
hour. One student was so devastated that he could not
speak without crying. He would go sit all by himself
and sob, and then he would come to my room to hug
Erika. One the last day of school, almost three months
later, he thanked me for bringing her. He apologized
for not thanking me sooner, but he had been unable to
talk about how he felt until then. He said that having
Erika there that day to hug had meant more to him than I
would ever know.
Another student had been so upset
that her friends had asked me to try to talk to her.
Normally a very talkative student, she had withdrawn and
would not speak to anyone. She wandered into my class
and collapsed into hysterical sobs on the floor just as
I was planning to leave for a quick lunch break. Erika
went to her immediately and laid her head in the
student’s lap. As she stroked Erika’s head, she began
to talk, not about the loss of a friend but about the
loss of her father who had died a few years earlier.
His death had been so painful for her that she had
locked those memories away because she could not live
with them. I knew that she had attempted suicide more
than once, so I had been extremely concerned for her.
But as she sat on the floor with Erika and me, she let
all those painful emotions out for the first time. As
long as she stroked Erika, she could talk. If she
stopped touching Erika, she stopped being able to talk.
It was a powerful experience for all three of us. It
was wonderful to see her become so much stronger in the
weeks following that time she spent with Erika and me.
She later said that Erika’s understanding had been the
key that opened her heart and mind so that she could
talk about the most horrible event of her young life and
finally begin to heal.
