AUBURN, Ala. (AP) - Most people can remember their time as a college student, the inevitable stress of tests, finals and classes.
The nursing school at Auburn University has a way to combat that: playing with dogs.
DOGS AND TRAINING
CAREing Paws, Canines Assisting with Rehab and Education, is a program that was developed nine years ago by Stuart Pope, associate clinical professor in the School of Nursing.
“The dogs are here at the school, most every day,” Pope said. “We have three dogs in the program now and (one in training). One of them is almost always at school, here, and the students can come by and visit with them.”
The CAREing Paws student club helps transport the dogs to various locations, like classrooms during finals week, he said. Many students in the club were once just visitors who wanted to play or spend time with the dogs.
“They have a dog room,” said Anissah Vekris, a senior in nursing who volunteers her time with CAREing Paws. “Students go there and it’s just kind of to relax and destress. We’re allowed to take them out on walks. Dr. Pope has even let me bring Miller to the study rooms when we’re studying in groups.
“I find it really relaxing; it just kind of gets your mind off of things. And of course, the dogs are really playful so it just distracts you a lot from the stress.”
Students who decided they want to help transport dogs or contribute to research have to become a bit more involved, Pope said.
“Now we have to make sure that (the students) are trained to handle dogs,” he said. “But they volunteer their time to learn and get trained to handle them. So then that’s what they do. So the students are very involved in all that we do.”
Pope began the program in the nursing school nine years ago, he said, with just one dog.
“I had a little Shih Tzu, named Aubie … we started the program with him,” he said. “And not long after that, I got Miller, who is now 9 years old, who has kind of become the face of the program. I call Miller my ‘Dennis the Menace.’”
THERAPY DOGS
Pope said that when the program began, he wanted to create a class available to students in “animal-assisted therapy” that they could take for credit.
Although the program hoped to introduce the class within five years, it was able to produce it in the first year. From that first class to last semester, the students have increased from eight to just over 70, he said.
“What makes it kind of unique is that fact that our students in nursing do not have to have an elective,” Pope said. “They take the class because they just want to learn about the dogs and play with dogs.”
Vekris decided to become more involved after taking the class with Pope, she said.
“We learned things from like basic training to grooming, then he also talked about the difference he’s seen in patients,” she said. “I got to experience a trip to a psychiatric unit with him and the difference it made in the patients there.”
The students help transport the dogs to other locations, outside of Auburn University.
“They go to nursing homes, they go to hospitals, they go to community places,” Pope said. “We go to schools, we go to early-education places, we go pretty much - hospice, any place that, even to private homes.”
The dogs in the program help with research as well.
“We’re fixing to start a program doing (research)walking dogs and seeing if it helps with encouraging people to exercise,” Pope said.
Diabetes patients walk the dogs, and he said they hope to see if the patients will be more inclined to exercise.
The nursing school just finished a research project that focused on patients with dementia, working with the REACH Program through Auburn United Methodist Church.
“(The first aspect of research focused on) how much it helps people to interact with the dogs, as far as people with dementia and (secondly) how it helps students, encourages students to want to work with older people,” Pope said.
Both aspects of the research were positive, he said. Interacting with dogs was beneficial to patients with dementia and increased interest in students.
“People would rather visit with a dog than they had with another person,” Pope said. “In other words, a person visiting with a person was positive, visiting with a dog was even more positive.”
The benefit for patients is positive short-term outlook or memory recall, he said.
“Some people, it just triggers something in them,” Pope said. “They call it the human-animal bond, and it’s just some connection that humans have with dogs.”
USEFUL RESEARCH
Vekris worked with Pope to bring the dogs to a psychiatric unit that worked on long-term pediatric care.
“I saw their faces just light up when they saw the dogs,” she said. “It made me realize what a difference the dogs make. Especially later on, I went there for clinicals and I saw yeah, they were happy, but nowhere near as happy as they were when the dogs were there.”
Pope can take the research to various hospitals and centers to show how the dogs positively affect treatment, Vekris said.
“Before you never brought dogs, especially into the cancer units, and places like that,” she said. “But since research has shown such an improvement in patients’ health and happiness, which is a huge point in their recovery, that they’ve started allowing, there’s strict rules, but they’ve started allowing dogs to go into the cancer units.”
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