Dog therapy proves a tonic
By Julie Klam |
June 2, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
FOR me, reading dog books is always a little bit fraught. There's just no way around comparing the dogs in the book with the ones that share my home. And mine, you see, are just this side of feral; their virtues include not eating all six of my dining room chairs. I almost never read books about good dogs or working dogs if I can help it, and certainly not about therapy dogs. I mean, what kind of therapy dogs would my dogs make? Is there a person whose life is too neat, or too happy?
Sue Halpern's book "A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home" features the kind of angelic animal I normally try to avoid: Pransky, a sweet seven-year-old Labradoodle. Halpern had Pransky certified as a therapy dog when her daughter was getting ready to go away to college and her husband was working and traveling a lot. It took a little over six weeks to get Pransky up to speed, and even before she was fully trained, Halpern had arranged for them to visit nursing home residents.
Pransky turns out to be a natural. "Watching Pransky jump in bed with a nursing home resident or put her head in someone's lap, I could see that the love she was sharing was simple and profound," Halpern writes.
To understand the human-dog bond and Pransky's particular talents, she draws upon Schopenhauer on loving-kindness, Descartes on the separation between mind and body, Aristotle on self-restraint and Darwin on animal emotions. And as we get to know Halpern better, it comes as no surprise that she volunteers. She's a really good person, and Pransky is a really good dog, and despite that, I loved the book.
When writing about pets and infirm and elderly people, the temptation to get sappy and sentimental may be great, but Halpern never succumbs. I found myself choking back tears at her spare and dignified descriptions of life in a nursing home: "Iris was in the far corner, her back to the window, her body framed by the sunlight, her eyes open, staring idly in the middle distance ... Dottie faced the television, which was turned off, its black screen broadcasting her own dull stare back to her."
Nor does the book become depressing, though the deaths do come. When a nearly mute woman touches Pransky's head and says, "Puppy," Halpern writes, it was like "feeling the synapses fire in my own brain." And there are many laughs as well, as when Halpern and Pransky encounter dog haters. ("Get your goddamn dog out of here!")
Halpern notes that Pransky sees the elderly for "who they are," not "what they are - disabled, aphasic, blind, mute." Pransky "started from acceptance, unlike the rest of us."
It is a great gift for someone with Halpern's mind to join with Pransky's heart to shed light on some very dark places for the rest of us. With this book, we all get to share in Halpern's wisdom and hope, "the thing with wispy, tan tail feathers, that weighed 43 pounds, that came when called."
Sue Halpern's book "A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home" features the kind of angelic animal I normally try to avoid: Pransky, a sweet seven-year-old Labradoodle. Halpern had Pransky certified as a therapy dog when her daughter was getting ready to go away to college and her husband was working and traveling a lot. It took a little over six weeks to get Pransky up to speed, and even before she was fully trained, Halpern had arranged for them to visit nursing home residents.
Pransky turns out to be a natural. "Watching Pransky jump in bed with a nursing home resident or put her head in someone's lap, I could see that the love she was sharing was simple and profound," Halpern writes.
To understand the human-dog bond and Pransky's particular talents, she draws upon Schopenhauer on loving-kindness, Descartes on the separation between mind and body, Aristotle on self-restraint and Darwin on animal emotions. And as we get to know Halpern better, it comes as no surprise that she volunteers. She's a really good person, and Pransky is a really good dog, and despite that, I loved the book.
When writing about pets and infirm and elderly people, the temptation to get sappy and sentimental may be great, but Halpern never succumbs. I found myself choking back tears at her spare and dignified descriptions of life in a nursing home: "Iris was in the far corner, her back to the window, her body framed by the sunlight, her eyes open, staring idly in the middle distance ... Dottie faced the television, which was turned off, its black screen broadcasting her own dull stare back to her."
Nor does the book become depressing, though the deaths do come. When a nearly mute woman touches Pransky's head and says, "Puppy," Halpern writes, it was like "feeling the synapses fire in my own brain." And there are many laughs as well, as when Halpern and Pransky encounter dog haters. ("Get your goddamn dog out of here!")
Halpern notes that Pransky sees the elderly for "who they are," not "what they are - disabled, aphasic, blind, mute." Pransky "started from acceptance, unlike the rest of us."
It is a great gift for someone with Halpern's mind to join with Pransky's heart to shed light on some very dark places for the rest of us. With this book, we all get to share in Halpern's wisdom and hope, "the thing with wispy, tan tail feathers, that weighed 43 pounds, that came when called."
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