Shaggy Dog Stories

Jane Miller already knew about the benefits of canine companionship when she began her practice as a clinical psychotherapist and licensed social worker. It took a special Golden Retriever named Umaya to show her how life with a dog — or even the simple act of touching and being touched by one — could make a huge difference in the life of someone suffering from severe, crippling emotional issues.

While visiting Jane’s office between vet appointments, Umaya began to display a talent for helping clients suffering from PTSD, depression, and other disorders. Inspired by the clients’ responses to Umaya’s attentions, Jane and her clients began to explore the possibility of working with dogs trained as psychiatric service animals.

The healing and helpful effects of these animals was immediately apparent. People who suffered horrendous trauma began to reenter the world with the help of their trusted dogs. If they suffered attacks or setbacks, the dogs were there to bring them to safety, gain their owners’ attention, and perform whatever tasks were needed to restore balance to the world.

Part narrative, part case history, and part valuable source book, Jane Miller’s Healing Companions discusses the roles of Psychiatric Service Dogs (PSDs) in people’s lives and in society. The book discusses how to select the right dog for service, how to care for that dog from the start through retirement and onward, the various rules and regulations, performance criteria and care standards from various service dog certification agencies, and so on. For me, the amazingly lengthy list of tasks that PSDs are trained to perform — classified by type of activity — was particularly interesting and impressive. The book also contains 100+ pages of helpful resources on subjects ranging from training to PTSD research to alternative healing.

If you are considering bringing a PSD into your life, or if you are a mental health professional exploring such a possibility for a client, Healing Companions is a tremendously useful source of information.

Healing Companions is published by Career Press under its New Page Books imprint. You can find it at Amazon, Dogwise, and all of the usual book outlets.

To read more about the book and about Jane, visit her Healing Companions website.

Jane Miller with Ahava and Simcha. Photo by Mary Basu.