Gryffin in his work vest!
Author: Emily Meade | Major: Nursing | Semester: Spring 2022
Hi! My name is Emily Meade, and I am in a junior in the Eleanor Mann school of nursing. I have spent the last semester working with Dr. Kilmer (EMSON) Dr. Quetsch (Department of Psychology), and 3 other students to train our service dog, Gryffin to be used in animal assisted therapy for children with developmental disorders. I decided to join this project when Dr. Kilmer spoke with our honors research class at the beginning of my junior year. I have always loved animals and have seen the impact that they can make on healing and development, and since being in college and not having any pets of my own, I have found myself seeking out opportunities to interact with animals. Along with this, my dream has always been to work in pediatric nursing. When Dr. Kilmer spoke about the research she was wanting to do, it sounded perfect for me!
Once I met with her and the research process had begun, the first step was to get a dog. Dr. Kilmer had a breeder in mind, and we were supposed to be able to start working in March, but plans changed and we received Gryffin in January! Our main task over this semester has been to train Gryffin on basic tasks such as “sit”, “stay”, “come”, and “lay down”. Although these seem like simple things to teach a dog, it was made more difficult by the fact that he was only a few months old when we started working with him. He is a black lab, and labs are notorious for not being fully matured until later in the life, which just added a little bit of difficulty. We needed to work on him listening and obeying, while also being calm and respectful to people which is hard for a little puppy, but we are grateful that Gryffin is very intelligent and has learned quickly. While working with him you could almost see his mind fighting between wanting to do his job well and still having those puppy tendencies. As he got older and towards the end of the semester, we started moving towards more difficult demands such as “go say hi” and “hug”. Just to add another layer to these commands, some of the kids he will work with may be nonverbal, so we for every command we teach him, he is also learning to obey the command if it is given with sign language.
This summer Gryffin will start working in therapy with children that have developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder. The goal of this project is to see if there is a benefit to animal assisted therapy in these cases. As much as we train Gryffin, we have also just been lucky that he is perfect for the job. He is great with kids, calming down and being gentle when he can tell they may be nervous, and is just overall a friendly dog. During an appointment he seemed to pick up that a child was a little nervous, as he is a big dog, and so he laid down and started passing his favorite ball back in forth with the child by nudging it with his nose. We didn’t teach him this, and had never seen it, but in that moment, he knew how to interact all on his own. We are hoping that he can provide experiences like this with more children to foster social interaction and comfort in the therapy setting. We are excited to see where this research goes and what Gryffin is able to accomplish!