McCarthy: When all else fails, try a little canine therapy

They have no medical degrees or advanced training. Heck, they can't even talk.

But they can see. Straight into the heart.

What so many talented therapists and special education teachers at Lokrantz Special Education school in Reseda worked so hard for months to accomplish, one little dog did in a few seconds last week.

The little boy was in the lowest functioning class, sitting bent over in his wheelchair, chin on his chest, avoiding eye contact with anyone.

"Our goal was to have him look at something, anything, but he never took his eyes off the ground," says Staci Concoff, a speech therapist at Lokrantz.

Then a shaggy, little, white dog bounced into the classroom, and the boy in the wheelchair, head still down, slowing began tracking the dog around the room with his eyes.

"Then he reached out to touch him," Staci says. "We were all stunned. That had never happened before."

Avi Zaraya wasn't stunned. He knew the power of these dogs. He'd been seeing it for two years over at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Woodland Hills, where he is director of volunteers.

Paws for Love pet therapy, it's called. Team of dogs and their owners walk the hallways of the hospital five days a week, stop by rooms and clinics to visit patients not responding to staff, depressed, and maybe on the verge of giving up.

Then this four legged creature that can't talk and has absolutely no formal medical training walks into the

room, and it's like the patients are kids again, and Santa Claus just stopped by to visit.

Who cares what the eyes see? It's what the heart feels.

"Staci and I are friends and I told her about all the success we were having with pet therapy at the hospital," Avi said.

If it works for hospital patients why not the kids with multiple disabilities at Lokrantz? So that's what they've been doing one day a week here.

The dogs come by to be petted and loved by the kids. They have no idea how much they're helping these kids reach the goals their therapists and teachers have set for them.

Laura Braverman has been working here as a volunteer and teacher for the last 14 years. After her son, Adam, died in 1999 she quit her managerial job, went back to school to get her special education teaching degree, and devoted her life to helping children with multiple disabilities, like her Adam.

She knew the power dogs have. She saw it every time one of her dogs would cuddle up next to her son who had crippling cerebral palsey. Adam couldn't see, talk, or walk.

But he could feel his dog next to him, and that made him smile.

"They had their own form of communication," Laura says. "Heart to heart."

The most powerful kind.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18064583?source=rss

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