Pooches are part of pet therapy USM professors study whether dogs improve patients’ well-being

PORTLAND – Two University of Southern Maine professors are conducting research to help determine whether dogs can improve the well-being of nursing home residents.

“There are a million and one anecdotes about people loving their pets, but how do we translate that common-sense truth into treatment?” said Nancy Richeson.

Richeson and William McCullough, professors of therapeutic recreation, want to study “the effect of animal-assisted therapy on the subjective well-being.”

A visit to Seaside Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Portland last week was part of the dogs’ training. Richeson and McCullough had trouble finding certified dogs for the project and decided to train their own.

The dogs finished training last week. Only some will make the cut to participate in the research in February and March.

During the visit to Seaside, residents perked up at the sight of the unruly visitors. The residents patted the dogs, stroked them and murmured to them. The dogs licked faces, panted and wagged their tails.

Dogs, says Lynn Reese of Gorham, “have us completely bamboozled. They are perfect parasites. They do nothing.”

Reese, the owner of five dogs, believes in “the efficacy of dogs and people.” She brought Meggy, a 3-year-old cairn terrier, to Seaside because she would like to be visited by a dog if she lived in such a facility.

Therapeutic recreation first was used as a method to help World War II veterans. USM’s department of recreation and leisure studies, part of the College of Nursing and Health Professions, focuses on using recreation in long-term rehabilitation for physical and mental disabilities.

The use of pets in therapy was the brainchild of a New York child psychologist, Boris Levinson, McCullough said. Levinson, who brought his dog to work in the 1950s, one day observed an autistic boy interacting with Jingles in a way he never had with people.

Levinson was met with ridicule when he first started talking about pet therapy, but his ideas gained credence in the 1960s and ’70s.

The use of pets is increasingly used in institutions, including Maine Medical Center, but research on the subject remains intuitive and minimal, Richeson said.

The professors’ project involves studying 30 residents in three facilities, Cedars Nursing Care Center in Portland, Falmouth by the Sea, and Southridge Rehabilitation and Living Center in Biddeford.

The residents in the project will have no serious cognitive impairments.

For five weeks, the participants will be divided into three groups. One afternoon each week, a dog and a handler will visit one group. A person will visit the other group. The third group will not be visited.

The researchers will ask the residents to quantify their feelings – distressed, inspired, jittery – and to respond to statements such as, “In most ways, my life is ideal.” The residents’ sense of well-being will be tracked.

The project is funded by USM, and Therapy Dogs, a 4,000-member national certifying group.