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Healing Species, Healing Hearts

June 12, 2007, 12:0AM MT

By Georgia Butterfield

One humane education program shows that even the most wounded have something valuable to share.

One humane education program shows that even the most wounded have something valuable to share.

By Ted Brewer, Best Friends Animal Society

At Spruce Elementary School in Lynwood, Washington, a class of fourth-graders awaits to pet Opie, an 11-year-old Jack Russell terrier. Opie stands on a desk at the front of the class with his caregiver, Ms. Judi.

“Who would like to fill Opie’s water bowl today?” Ms. Judi asks.

Every hand in the classroom shoots up.

Ms. Judi picks a girl in the back of the class, who hasn’t yet had the honor to perform this prized service for the dog.

Once Opie has his water, Ms. Judi asks, “Does everyone remember how many homes Opie has had?”

“Seven,” the class responds in chorus.

“That’s right,” Ms. Judi says.

Ms. Judi then invites a small group of students to come up and pet Opie. The children spring from their desks and cluster around the dog, but then remember to calm themselves. Gently, they lay their hands on the Jack Russell and stroke him.

“What are we showing?” Ms. Judi asks.

Again, all hands go up.

“How to give love,” one boy answers.

Ms. Judi invites another group up, and once all the students have had a chance to show how to give love, Ms. Judi hands the floor over to Ms. Carolin, who has just finished writing something on the board—a quote by Albert Schweitzer.

It reads, “Until man extends the circle of compassion to all living things, he himself will not find peace.”

* * *

Outside the classroom, Ms. Judi is Judi Anderson-Wright, professional dog trainer and co-owner of Great Dog Daycare and Canine Education Center in Seattle, and Ms. Carolin is Carolin Behrend, program director of Healing Species Puget Sound. Specializing in character enhancement and violence prevention, Healing Species is a multi-state humane education program featuring therapy dogs, all of whom have been rescued from shelters. Opie is one.

Opie had been in and out of shelters and was bound for the euthanasia list when Anderson-Wright adopted him. Suffering from separation anxiety and other behavioral problems, Opie worked through his issues with his new caregiver and other trainers until he was so calm and well-behaved that Anderson-Wright began taking him into nursing homes, hospitals, and schools. With a renewed lease on life, Opie today serves, as all the dogs volunteering for Healing Species do, as not just a learning aid, but as a model of inspiration in overcoming adversity and abuse.

“What better way to reach ‘shut down’ children,” the Healing Species website reads, “than through the wagging tail and unconditional love of dogs nobody else wanted? The children learn first hand that even the most vulnerable and most wounded among us is important and does have something important to give.”

Since its inception in 1999, the Healing Species program has educated more than 4,500 students in and beyond its home base of Orangeburg, South Carolina, offering its once-a-week, 11-week curriculum to schools in Florida, Kentucky, Colorado, Arizona, and now Washington State. Founder and director of Healing Species, Cheri Brown Thompson hit on the idea for the program while a law student at the University of South Carolina. She was in her early thirties at the time, wanting to help children and animals, but not knowing exactly how yet.

In class one day, her professor presented the concept of “depraved heart crimes,” a term used in courtroom sentencing that refers to acts committed by people who have lost all sense of empathy—people who, in committing their crimes, perceive their victims as having no feeling and no value whatsoever. This is known in the psychology and law arenas as “objectification.”

“It just all came together at the point,” Thompson says, “and all my writing assignments from then on went back to this depraved heart concept.” In her research, and in interviews with several violent criminals, she found that an overwhelming majority of offenders had themselves been the victims of violence as children and, in turn, started down their own path of violent behavior by first retaliating on those most vulnerable and readily available—animals.

“Once you can see animals as objects,” Thompson explains, “there’s no line you can’t cross.”

She decided she wanted to confront the source of violent behavior head on rather than deal with its consequences in court, and so started developing the Healing Species program, designed to strike at the origin of violence before it can take hold of the children who are most susceptible to its grip.

While still in law school, Thompson had an experience which would later lend itself to a number of lessons in the program. Driving along a rural road one day, she noticed a dog standing by the side of the road in front of a house. “She was covered in mange and had no fur,” Thompson remembers. “And she had absolutely no body fat. She was just a bag of bones.”

Thompson stopped, and offered the dog the one food item she had with her, a pop tart. The dog backed away when Thompson approached, unwilling to accept the food. Thompson got back in her car and drove to the nearest store, returning with a can of dog food. After several attempts, the dog finally accepted the offering, but only after Thompson backed away.

“I was so overcome,” she says, “I just got in my car and cried.”

For months, Thompson returned each day to feed the dog, whom by now she had named Gravy (for having one foot in the grave). On one occasion, a car pulled up to the house. It was Gravy’s people, and they waved politely to Thompson, as if there was nothing at all askew with this picture—of some stranger having to feed their dog.

“I knew then that these people could see the dog with their eyes, but not with their heart. And I thought, ‘this must be what the first stage of objectification looks like.’”

Because they couldn’t care less about the dog, the people allowed Thompson to take Gravy home with her. And today Gravy lives happily with Thompson, her fur in tact, meat on bones, fright overcome, and her story the first of many that students learn from in the Healing Species program.

* * *

With a master’s degree in humane education from Cambridge College, Behrend came to Healing Species having also learned first-hand the therapeutic power in empathizing with animals. A native of Germany, Behrend moved to the United States in 2001 after marrying an American. She had some time on her hands while waiting for her green card, and decided she would volunteer at an animal sanctuary outside Seattle until then. At first Behrend wanted to work with the animals in the wildlife center, but the center had no openings. So the volunteer coordinator asked if she would like to be a kennel attendant in the canine department instead. Behrend agreed, and on her first day on the job, she met Jordan, a six-year-old Rhodesian ridgeback.

There was something different about Jordan, something which attracted Behrend to him instantly. Unlike the rest of the dogs who jumped up and barked excitedly at Behrend when she arrived, Jordan didn’t bother to even raise an eyebrow. “He was so sad, so depressed,” Behrend says. “I felt so sorry for the dog I spent a whole lot of time with him that day, and went home and just cried all night.” Behrend, as she says now, identified with Jordan.

“For years, I didn’t like people. I was closed off.” Behrend had reason to be.

In 1995, at the age of 26, her little sister, whose name was Britta, was murdered. Behrend was 32 at the time. She was still trying to recover from the tragedy when she first laid eyes on Jordan.

Week after week, Behrend returned to the sanctuary, and each time found Jordan there, languishing in his kennel as the other dogs came and went. “He wouldn’t even look at people, so nobody wanted him,” she says.

Then one day Behrend saw a woman and her 10-year-old son standing by Jordan’s kennel and talking about the dog. Behrend approached. “I told them about how he had been there for such a long time, and how sorry I felt for him, because I thought he had just given up.” Apparently, the mother and the boy understood Behrend’s compassion for Jordan. They decided to adopt him.

“And that was my initiation,” Behrend says. “Because I was there at the right time, I made a difference in this one life. That might sound trivial, but for me it was a big moment….Relating to this animal brought me back. Having helped him changed everything for me.”

It was shortly after Behrend’s recovery that she came across Healing Species on the Web, and saw the therapeutic work the program was doing towards mending depraved hearts.

“Healing Species made so much sense to me because of that healing-of-the-heart aspect. When you’re working in humane education, you’re dealing with a lot of heartbreaking stuff. So many people come from abusive backgrounds, and often it seems the only way of dealing with it is to not go on.”

Healing Species, if anything, teaches how to go on—by showing children how to remove themselves from all forms of abuse or violence, how to grieve and manage their anger, how to find respect and compassion for the feelings of others, and finally how to give love. The program is proving to have a profound impact.

In a formal study conducted by the University of South Carolina’s School of Social Work, the program lowered out-of-school suspensions for violent behavior by 50 percent, decreased all kinds of aggressive outbursts by 62 percent, and increased the number of empathetic choices the children made by 42 percent. In another formal in-house study—conducted by one of the Lexington, Kentucky School districts—students’ in-class performances shot up by 80 percent as a result of the Healing Species program.

Each Healing Species class begins with the story (or a reminder) of the attending dog’s past, and the mistreatment the dog endured before capturing the heart of his or her current caregiver. It’s always a story the children can readily understand and perhaps even relate to, opening their minds to the lesson the Healing Species educator has in store for them that day, a lesson that can have as much to do with social issues—racism, war, equality, and bullying—as with animal issues. And the dogs are getting through, to even the most troubled kids.

Behrend recalls one particular student, who threw a fit one day just before she was to give her lesson. He was screaming, yelling, and, after kicking his desk over, was sent to an isolation room. On that day, a yellow Labrador/husky mix rescue named Amber was assisting Behrend. Amber watched as the boy was taken out of class and ushered into the isolation room. As the lesson started, Amber kept yanking her caregiver towards the open door of the room. The teacher finally gave the dog’s handler the go-ahead.

“The dog walked straight up to the boy,” Behrend says, “cuddled up against him, and the boy put his arms around her. And then silence, calm. The next time he was in class, he had this big smile on his face. I had another dog with me that day, and he asked, ‘when’s Amber coming back?’

“I think the dog makes all the difference.”

* * *

Back at Spruce Elementary, Ms. Carolin helps the students get a gist of the Albert Schweitzer quote by drawing a stick figure and a small circle around it.

“This is me,” she says. “And on some days, it’s all about what I want and what I need. It’s all about me—me, me, me. And there’s no room for anybody else. Does anyone have those kinds of days?” she asks the class.

“Yes,” five or six students groan.

Ms. Carolin then draws another stick figure, but this time draws a much larger circle around it.

“And then on other days, I have room for my family, my friends, my neighbors, for dogs, for cats, for the birds, for the trees in my yard…,” she says, adding a dot inside the circle for each item until finally the circle is full.

“And how do you think I feel on those days?” she asks.

Once again, all hands are raised.

What You Can Do:

For more information on Healing Species, visit http://www.healingspecies.org

For more information on Healing Species in Washington State, visit http://www.healingspeciespugetsound.org

For more information on Great Dog Daycare and Canine Education Center, visit http://www.gogreatdog.com

Photo credits:
Carolin Behrend - Jen Walker
Opie and kids - Great Dog, Seattle
Dogs - Georgia Butterfield

Comments

Posted June 13, 2007, 9:0AM by kendra

That is the sweetest thing ever.
: )
This story just made my day. It's only 9:00, but after reading this, I don't think anything can get me down today.

Posted June 13, 2007, 9:56PM by ediecb

What a beautiful story. Bless you, Cheri, and all of the other HS instructors around the country who daily commit to living and teaching the ideals of healing, compassion, empathy and unconditional love. May the HS spread throughout our world!

Edie (former HS instructor in SC)

Posted June 14, 2007, 12:17PM by veganmarcy

what i would do for every area to have this, i wonder if there are webistes that show by region of U.S. what orgs of this type are offered to sign up with?

Posted June 14, 2007, 6:10PM by PamelaB

And the last shall be first...

Posted June 15, 2007, 5:51PM by VBelt

These types of programs should be in every elementary school, middle school and high school. Thanks to Cheri, Carolin and all those people out there making a difference in so many children's lives!

Posted June 21, 2007, 9:5AM by sherylcatmom

What else you can do:

Carolin Behrend got her master's degree in Humane Education from the Institute for Humane Education.

Learn more about the Master's Degree in Humane Education by clicking here. Along with that excellent master's distance-learning program, IHE offers:

* The acclaimed, life-changing 2-day Sowing Seeds Workshop, which empowers everyone to be a humane educator

* The 2-day MoGo (Most Good, Least Harm) Workshop

* A distance-learning Humane Education Certification Program, for those who want the content of the Humane Ed. master's without entering a degree program

* A world of humane education resources and connections to others doing the work at http://www.humaneeducation.org

Posted June 14, 2007, 12:48PM by kittychump

this is what the whole world should be about.

Posted July 17, 2007, 10:11AM by Morrisonb

This is the nicest story, ever. Just made my day reading this. What an awesome program! I am going to do some research and see if there are any locations around me, in Ohio.
Thanks for this story! :)

Posted July 17, 2007, 2:57PM by rmlamasney25

Look at those statistics! decreased aggression 62%....why can't every school have this program? We need to reach children while they are young.

Thank you Carolin, and Ms. Judi...you should both receive Teacher of the Year awards. and thank you Ted, for this excellent article.

Posted June 13, 2007, 12:56PM by JAK

I do not ever get tired of these kinds of stories.
I want to believe there are angels out there to save them all, in my heart I know that there aren't enough yet... but with the kindness I see growing ...maybe someday, these souls will be looked at as not just objects ... Thats is my prayer!!!!