Robin's Nest from American Humane - Amy Hrin, PH.D. Vice President, Military Affairs & Special Projects

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Dr. Hrin’s research work has encompassed the design and implementation of rigorous studies to demonstrate the impact of the human-animal bond on both humans and animals. 

Welcome to Robin's Nest. So many of us have a deep connection with the animals around us and want to protect them from the pets in our homes to endangered species in the wild. That's why I joined American Humane. As one of the oldest and most effective animal protection groups, we help billions of animals around the world. Join us as we explore how we can build a more humane world together. Hello and welcome to Robin's Nest. I'm Dr. Robin Ganzert and this is the official podcast of American Humane and Global Humane, the nation's first and most experienced humane

organization focused on the humane treatment of animals all over the world, from certifying zoos to being the first boots on the ground in crisis and rescues, and making sure animals are safe in the filming of movie sets around the world. There's so much to talk about with American Humane's power to touch lives and keep animals safe. But today we're focusing on a remarkable military dog program supporting veterans and military working animals. We are so glad you're taking the time to hear some incredible stories and we want to hear what you think after you've listened. Please make sure to review Robin's Nest on your podcast platform. I am so excited to introduce you today to our special guest, Dr. Amy Wren. Amy Wren serves as the National Director of American Humane's

Lois Pope Life Center for Military Affairs, supporting veterans and military animals, and the Small Animal Certification Program. Over her decade-long tenure at American Humane, Dr. Wren has created and managed many vital programs to help people in need through the power of the human-animal bond. Hi, welcome Dr. Amy Wren to Robin's Nest. Amy, it's great to see you today. Thank you, Robin. It's great to be here. Well, Amy, you're one of my favorite people in the entire world because you have devoted your entire life to serving the human-animal bond. In fact, you're one of the nation's top researchers in this very subject. And at American Humane, you have done some really cool and special things.

But before we get into all the great work that you do, I would love to know more about Dr. Amy Wren. Like, do you have a favorite pet? Is there a puppy with you right now? Please do tell. Absolutely. You know, Robin, a surprising fact about me, especially given my role at American Humane, is as a child, I didn't have any pets. and I grew up terrified of dogs. Until one day that changed. Friends told me, you just haven't met the right dog. So as an adult, I got up the nerve to go to my local shelter and I met a very sweet three-year-old female golden retriever named Bailey.

Oh, you know, Amy, when I first met you Bailey was in your life and Bailey was a very special girl and what you and Bailey did is legendary I think what I did not realize Bailey was your very first dog though that's an amazing story and wow she was the greatest sweetheart in the world she really was. You know, the minute I met her, I knew she was special. And I wanted to share her unconditional love. And so I learned about therapy dogs.

And that was the perfect job for her. And that's right about this time when I started at American Humane. And really, Bailey became our therapy dog ambassador. I started at American Humane and really Bailey became our therapy dog ambassador. And through her 12 years of service, she provided comfort and healing to literally thousands of people. We visited in settings representing American Humane and hospitals and nursing homes, libraries, mental health centers. Some unique settings were traveling to summer camps for children who had a deployed parent in the military. Very special visits. And of course, you remember American Humane deployed us in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing to provide comfort

to the citizens of Boston. So really some amazing experience I had with this very special golden retriever. And really, she really sent me on a completely different trajectory in my career. There's just so many special moments of the human and will bond that I could tell you about. But I'll tell you one really special story that really stands out for me. Very powerful. I was sitting at my desk one day at American Humane and the phone rang. And it was one of the local hospice organizations that we had partnered with. And the hospice coordinator told me that they had a patient who was actively dying. She didn't have

any family or friends with her. And her one last request was to be able to see a dog. So Bailey and I jumped in the car. I can remember this day vividly. It was February. It was snowing. We drove to the hospice facility. We arrived there and we entered her room and she was in her hospital room lying in her bed. And so I took the chair. I pushed it up against the hospital bed. Bailey jumped onto the chair and looked over at the woman who was sleeping. At that point, she opened her eyes and I said, this is Bailey. She's come to see you. And the woman reached up, petted Bailey and went back to sleep. And Bailey sat there on that chair looking over this woman for I don't

know how much time had passed until the hospice staff came in and let us know that she had passed. This was life-changing for me to be able to help a person at their end of life with their wish to be with an animal. Incredibly powerful. I can't just get goosebumps thinking about it. And so that's really what led my trajectory at American Humane. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to understand what was happening here. I wanted to study and research and it drove me to go back. Bailey inspired me to go get my PhD so I could really understand this powerful human-animal bond. Amy, first of all, there's not a dry eye left for anyone listening to Robin's Nest today after that story. I should always know to have a box of tissues when I have conversations with you because you always, you just, oh, the heartstrings, the heartstrings.

And, oh, my goodness, the story about the lady in hospice, unbelievable. But I have to go back a second, and you said Bailey was a shelter dog. Isn't that amazing? She was. Please tell us about that, because people don't realize you can go to a shelter, and there's your Bailey, maybe a golden retriever. Absolutely, yes. and there's your Bailey, maybe a golden retriever. Absolutely. Yes, we have adopted all of our dogs from shelters

and we have just found the most wonderful companions for our family. And in fact, American Humane's Pups for Patriots service dog program also seeks to find wonderful dogs and shelters in the need of forever homes because there are wonderful animals out there who deserve our love. That's so beautiful, so beautiful Amy. Oh my goodness, well now we're gonna pivot a little bit. First of all I think it's very important for everyone who's listening today, you are Dr. Amy Rand and

your research is in the human-animal bond. Can you tell us a little bit more about your PhD process and what you studied? Absolutely. It's absolutely fascinating. And I thank you, Robin, for making the human-animal bond such a foundational pillar of the work that we do at American Humane. It's absolutely a fascinating mechanism that really this assumption of the human-animal bond rests on the fact that there's something about animals that attracts humans. We have sort of an innate need to interact with animals and nature. And there are accounts of animals benefiting human

health as far back as 1960, when Florence Nightingale noted that pets are excellent companions for the sick. And the birth of animal-assisted therapy is attributed to a child psychologist named Boris Levinson in the 70s, and he used his pets as co-therapists in his counseling sessions with children. So what a wonderful long history of humans realizing the benefits of interacting with animals. And it's becoming more and more of a mainstream practice to incorporate animals in our lives and particularly in human health settings. You can find animal assisted interventions in settings like psychotherapy, mental health centers, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy. In fact, Robyn, I have to tell you another story about a wonderful visit I had in a physical therapy setting. And this was with my most recent therapy dog, Butler. I love Butler. He is retired

now. What a face, by the way. Butler has that great face. He is a very special rescue dog as well. And American Humane partnered with the Weather Channel and had deployed Butler and me to various places across the country who have been impacted by severe weather. So communities that were dealing in the aftermath of tornadoes, flooding, and other weather-related events. And one day we got deployed to a very special mission. And this was a 16-year-old boy in Tennessee who had been severely injured in a weather-related accident. A huge snowstorm had been falling, and he and his friends had gone sledding. His sled went headfirst into a tree and left him paralyzed. A huge snowstorm had been falling and he and his friends had gone sledding. His sled went headfirst into a tree and left him paralyzed.

So we wanted to see if perhaps a visit from Butler could help on his long journey to recovery. He was transported to a spinal center and he was working on regaining movement in his arms and legs. So Butler and I went to visit him. regaining movement in his arms and legs. So Butler and I went to visit him and this young man was an avid fisherman and his goal was to be able to one day again be able to hold on to a fishing pole. Well the week before I was chatting with the physical therapist and she said we've been working on some exercises to help him reach his goal of being able to fish and hold his fishing pole again and we were trying to get him to be able to work on his grip strength, hold a ball. He wasn't able to do it last week. So I said, let me pull out Butler's yellow tennis ball,

pulled it out of his bag, and I handed it to the young man. He looked at the ball. He looked at Butler. At this point, as you can imagine, Butler is very engaged and excited that he has the chance to potentially chase his tennis ball. So at this point, this young man couldn't resist. He was able to pull his fingers around the ball, lift his arm, throw the ball across the room. And the smile on this young boy's face, I will never forget. He threw the ball for Butler over and over again and made some amazing advancements in his therapy that day,

all thanks to interacting with a dog, gave him that extra inspiration that he needed. It's just so amazing, all these practices of animal-assisted therapy and interactions that can really powerfully help people in need. You know, Amy, what you just described is a living miracle right before your very eyes. And it's, again, that healing power of this magical bond, this mystery bond that we share with these very incredible creatures. I always love to say dog is God spelled backwards. very incredible creatures. I always love to say dog is God spelled backwards. And what you've really seen is these incredible divine miracles happening before your very eyes with these great, great precious pups, which takes me to something that I know is so groundbreaking, so innovative. You served as our principal investigator, lead researcher on a most incredible project, I think,

in the world. It's canines and childhood cancer, where you worked with kiddos facing this terrible diagnosis in their families, but you brought them happiness with the dog. Can you share with us more about canines and childhood cancer, that groundbreaking study you led for so many years as a clinical trial, I believe. Yes, I am so proud of the work that we were able to do with this study. And thank you to you, Robin, for having the spark of the idea that ended up being a first of its kind study. Your ideas transitioned into a multi-site, six children's hospitals, into a multi-site, six children's hospitals, 30 dogs participating, and incredible results. You know, the field of animal-assisted therapy and the human-animal bond research had really been a little bit lacking up until then. There was so many great anecdotal research, but nothing really that was the robust scientific basis that we need. So I'm so incredibly proud that our canines and childhood cancer helped advance the study

of anthrozoology and the impact that animals can have on humans. We are just so incredibly proud to be able to scientifically demonstrate, since science really is the underpinning of all our programmatic work at American Humane. So this study demonstrated that kiddos who are able to visit with a therapy dog during their chemotherapy sessions had less stress than kiddos who did not. It was absolutely incredible to show that based on interviews with the parents, with the kiddos, that really therapy dogs were impacting the entire family during these devastating, scary, traumatic times in a child's life. The other part I really love about our canines and childhood cancer study is that American Humane always wants animal welfare

to be number one. And so it was important to us to include a piece of our study where we also assessed the stress levels in the therapy dogs, because we wanted to make sure that these interactions were mutually beneficial on both ends of the leash. And that is exactly what the study found, that these dogs did not have any increased stress as being part of these chemotherapy sessions with the kiddos. So wonderful scientific results from the study. wonderful scientific results from this study. You know, Amy, you know, I think here about us, you know, creating this robin's nest place for storytelling about these incredible animals and how they impact our lives and our world. And you've just shared one of the most groundbreaking, I think, ever with the canines and childhood cancer study. There had to be a very special

therapy dog in that study that touched your heart. And I bet more than one kiddo. Can you share with us a story about a very special kid and a very special therapy dog? Yes. Robin, I think you remember Mighty Mitchell. And he was one of the kiddos in our study. And he was paired with therapy dog Swoosh. Now, Swoosh is a toy Pomeranian, just a sweet little fuzzball.

And Mitchell and his family, you know, typically you're not going to look forward to going to your chemotherapy sessions. But Swoosh made it safe for Mitchell to come to get his treatments. He wasn't scared to go. It can be physically uncomfortable during the sessions, but Mitchell was so excited because he knew he would get to see his friend Swoosh when he came in for his treatments. The dog was inspirational for helping the family feel better about Mitchell undergoing these difficult processes.

And Mitchell was just happy to play with the dog. And so it was just incredible that we have these wonderful live distractions during some very difficult times in our lives and dogs are being themselves and they really enrich our lives so much. I'm just so proud of this study and and really how the field has grown so much. The most recent area of study in human-animal bond so much. The most recent area of study in human-animal bond field is looking at another practice that is near and dear to our heart, and that is finding scientific demonstrations of evidence that service dogs can improve the lives of military veterans who have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injuries. So some of the latest research that has come out in this topic has told us that veterans

who have a service dog, when compared to those on a wait list for a service dog, those veterans with dogs have less depression, less anxiety, better quality of life. So many great studies have been coming out from universities across the country. And of course, still are qualitative studies that are telling us that with a dog at their side, veterans feel less hypervigilance and even at times can have reduced sleep disturbances and needs for medication. So this is so important to us at American Humane because that informs our wonderful program of Pups for Patriots where we pair service dogs with veterans at absolutely no cost to the veteran. I love this. I love, first of all, that you're really sharing with everyone here the stories, the most impactful stories of people and animals that you have met. But importantly, you're underscoring that science,

there's credible science, clinical trials that are backing the fact that our theory, that animals make us healthier and better humans, that's actually happening in real time. And I certainly think the groundbreaking work in canines and childhood cancer, it naturally leans to the clinical trials that you're talking about now in future studies to show the link between easing those terrible PTS conditions, symptoms, et cetera, easing those for the lives of our nation's veterans just through a service dog, a healing leash that you give. I want to back up for a minute because I think that's an incredible way for us to continue our time together.

Share with me, Pups for Patriots, why that program was created. And then, of course, you led the scientific effort for American Humane to drive in these incredible groundbreaking standards for service dogs. Please share with us what you've done. Again, Dr. Amy Wren, you are an angel on earth and I love what you're doing. Please keep going. Thank you, Robin. Now, the Pups for Patriots program is so important. We know that with recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, more and more veterans are coming home, not the same as when they left. And this has been a condition throughout our wars. We used to call it shell shock, battle fatigue.

But really what we're talking about are invisible wounds of war. And that is post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries. That really our veterans are coming home from war and finding themselves unable to transition back into their civilian life. And tragically, too many times that can result in the taking of their own lives. There's a lot of evidence out there for great treatments, pharmaceutical, cognitive behavioral therapies. But sometimes when these therapies can fall short, there's something that can help that

we've seen firsthand. And that's the healing power of a wagging tail service dog specifically for veterans with these types of invisible wounds. We have seen so many powerful interactions and coping skills and recoveries for so many veterans that we've been able to serve through our own Pups for Patriots program. That's incredible. You know, you did some incredible research. I was just going back through and reading some of the research that you did to create the scientific advisory committee where you develop the standards and then you bring them out to practice. I read that you have now,

and then you bring them out to practice. I read that you have now, I think it's 300 healing leashes have been provided. Isn't that incredible? You created this program that has delivered 300 service dogs in, what, five or six years. That's a stunning number because I think about that high suicide rate, 22 a day of our nation's veterans, especially those suffering from PTS and TBI from the Iraq and Afghan war. But truly, you go back and you serve Vietnam veterans, people in lots of different conflicts and theaters of war, Persian Gulf, all of that. But you have brought home 300 healing lesions to our veterans. That's amazing. It is. It's just incredible to think about all of those

dogs, all of those faces, all those families. When we think about not only have we served 300 veterans, you think about the cascading effects of those children of those veterans, of the spouses, of their parents, their siblings. I mean, it's in the thousands. It's incredible. And you're right. We really, when we formed this program, we wanted to make sure that we convened a panel of experts because we wanted to make the most incredibly impactful program that we could. So we create a scientific advisory committee, which we do for all of our programmatic work at American Humane. had experts from all the different fields that touch this space. We had mental health professionals. We have veterinarians, animal behaviorists. We had veterans themselves. We had stakeholders from the Department of Defense, from the VA, and even some of those gatekeepers that have service dogs coming into the public. So we invited Hotel Association, the National Restaurant Association. All of the communities and society that are impacted for veterans wanting to go out and live their lives again. It was an incredible committee of very smart people and really came up with the ground rules and the best practices for how this program can most effectively serve veterans in need.

Dr. Amy Wren, you are amazing. We probably have time for one story about one veteran and service dog. So I know you've got, they're all your favorites. 300 are your favorites. But please share one story if you could, as we close out this session. You're going to make us cry, I know. I want to tell you, Robin, the story of Georgie. And this is kind of from the beginning to today. So the Pups for Patriots program is always looking for dogs in need of a forever home. So I visited a shelter nearby. They contacted me and they said, we have a chocolate lab here and she has been surrendered. Unfortunately, her owner was elderly and had suffered a stroke and simply could not keep such a young, active dog. So this chocolate lab was

there at the shelter looking for a home. So I visited her and conducted our temperament tests. And I thought this dog has definitely the makings of a wonderful service dog. So then we needed to transport this pup to our trainer on the East Coast. So I called my colleague and friend, Josh Carey, who heads up American Humane's Rescue Department. And luckily, he was not deployed in an animal disaster that week. He was able to safely transport this pup to our trainer so she could start on her service dog training skills. About that time, I also contacted a colleague,

Brad Andrews, who is our global director of our conservation program. And Brad was very interested in this program. He said, how can I help? I would like to sponsor a veteran dog team. How can I help? And as you know, Robin, the cost for completing these teams runs in the field of $30,000. And so Brad said, I'd really like to help. I said, Brad, thank you so much. The next thing we need to do is this dog deserves a new name for her new journey. Brad took a look at a picture of this chocolate lab and he said, she reminds me of a walrus that I once bottle fed in his long career in helping with zoos and aquariums.

He said, and that walrus name was Georgie. So this service dog's name is going to be Georgie. So around this time is when we had an incredible Army veteran named Mark who applied for our program. And his wife Margie painted us a picture of what led Mark to applying. He had served in three war zones. He came home a different man. His injuries were hidden. His wife talked about how when he spoke once in a while, Mark's language would come out as gibberish. He would lose balance for no reason. His temper was on edge at all times.

He couldn't remember names, faces. He couldn't sleep. He eventually became a recluse. He didn't want to see anybody, visit anyone. And it really took a toll on his marriage. His children didn't know how to respond to him. And his wife told us the entire family was broken. And so Mark entered the Pups for Patriots program, and he was paired with Georgie, named after a walrus, sweet chocolate lab, and it was a match made in heaven. This connection was so incredibly powerful.

Mark today recently spoke again with Margie, and Mark is one of our ambassadors out there speaking about the power of the humanoid bond and service dogs through Pups for Patriots. He tells us that really Georgie was like a magic bullet for their whole family. When Mark got home from training, he was himself again. He was showing that compassion inside. He was able, thanks to Georgie, to go out in public again. Even holding onto his leash was helping with his balance. The family was able to get their bond back again. And whenever Georgie notices a difference in Mark's personality, she's been trained to offer Mark a hug and that brings him back and brings him out of the session of maybe re-experiencing some of his trauma, incredibly, incredibly

powerful journey that they've been on. It's they've been paired for five years now. Margie tells us that Georgie gave me my husband back georgie gave my children their dad back and georgie has been our family's saving grace saving grace i can't imagine a better way to end this segment than think about saving grace dr amy wren thank you so much for all you do. Thank you for your incredible research, your incredible programmatic agenda. And thanks for being an angel.

So great to visit with you today at Robbins Nest. Thank you.