Amy Johnson uses dogs to help troubled teenagers, returning soldiers

Dogs couldn’t care less “if you are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his,” wrote John Grogan, author of Marley and Me, who accurately sums up the relationship between a man and his dog. And it’s a relationship that Amy Johnson hopes to foster with her non-profit organization. With a master’s degree in teaching from Wayne State University, another master’s degree in counseling from Oakland University, and a certification in dog training, Johnson put all three together to form Teacher’s Pet, an organization that pairs at-risk youths with rescue dogs to foster in positive results for both the child and the dog. Likewise, she is applying similar principles in the Oakland County Dog Tags program, which helps veterans returning from war zones reintegrate into society by training rescue dogs to become more adoptable. In both these programs, everybody wins — the participant, the dog, the adoptive family, and even Johnson herself.

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You have a master’s degree in both teaching and counseling. Please explain what drew you toward these two professions. You are also a certified dog trainer. Why did you want to become one?

AJ: Initially, I was working in the schools. I taught English — some of the related language arts-type classes in middle school, high school. Then, I went to work for the Michigan Humane Society, and I did a lot of work with kids in the schools, developing curriculums with dog safety, dog training — that kind of thing which prompted my non-profit. And once I started working with the kids at Kingsley (Montgomery School in Waterford) who have some emotional impairment issues and kids in detention, I thought I probably needed to understand a little more about kids with those kinds of issues. So then I went back and got my master’s in counseling. It’s helped me further develop the curriculum. And then I also do work with poor educated youths and their families in Macomb County. The counseling is like an on-the-side type job.

The dog training part came in when I developed the non-profit. In my non-profit, Teacher’s Pet, we train kids how to train rescue dogs. So I figured I’d probably need to know how to train dogs before I could teach (kids) how to train dogs. So I went through the certification process and became certified and took the national dog training certification exam a few years ago. And I figured I needed to practice, so I did practice through the Michigan Humane Society training individuals and their dogs before I started working with the kids. I don’t do any other dog training outside the kids at this time.

You’re involved in different programs that use dogs as a therapeutic tool and aid. How did you decide to include animals as a counseling technique?

AJ: I find other animals can work as well, but dogs are my main vehicle for therapy. I just find that people are drawn to dogs, and dogs are very unconditional, very honest with how they feel. A dog is not going to tell you, “Oh, I’m great, and I really like you,” and then turn around and talk bad about you as sometimes people will. So there’s an ability for people to let their guard down a little bit as well as the physiological aspects of petting a dog. Within 3 to 5 minutes, your heart rate will go down, your blood pressure will go down, your anxiety levels will go down. So it makes it a lot easier to communicate with other people or to help other people feel more comfortable to divulge personal information when there is a dog in the room. It just works better than any other method that I’ve ever worked with. I mean, I know how I feel when I’m around dogs, so that was sort of my impetus.

You oversee the online Animal Assisted Therapy Certificate program at Oakland University. Please tell us about the program. How do people benefit from the program, and what does the certificate enable them to do?

AJ: We developed a five-module program. A lot of people who knew what we did wanted us to be in their school: “Can you come out to our school? Can you come out to our facilities?” And there really isn’t a way to be at that many places, and it’s kind of costly. So my former boss said we needed to develop a trainer-type program. After going through other groups and programs in the country — there are a few other colleges that have programs like this — we took the most practical aspects of that programming so that our program is one that anybody from any background, any profession, if they want to start incorporating animals into any of the work that they do, the first module is just kind of an overview of what they can expect. The second module focuses more on research and psychology. The third one focuses on special populations regardless of what type of population you want to work with — the elderly, kids in hospitals, prisoners, whatever environment — and how to incorporate animals into that environment. The fourth module is working with animals and what makes a good therapy animal, how you know when your animal is stressed. How do you alleviate some of that stress in your dog? The final module sort of pulls everything together like what you want to do. It gives you a business plan, of sorts. So you can go in if you are a teacher and you want incorporate animals into the classroom, you have a plan that says, “Here’s kind of the background, here’s the methodology, here’s the resources that we’ll need, here’s how we’re going to measure and evaluate the program,” etc.

Usually, they are working in some form of service profession anyway, where they are teachers, or physical therapists, or nurses. We’ve had ministers, social workers, a variety of service professionals. It sort of acts as a supplement to what they are already doing. They understand their curriculum, but now they know that if I want to bring in a dog, I’m not just going to have a dog in the classroom because that’s not therapeutic. It’s kind of the bridge on how we make the dog a therapeutic vehicle. And I use “vehicle,” which is not — I know they are living beings and I don’t mean it to be impersonal, but I use it as just a mechanism for helping to achieve certain goals. So once you have an idea of what goals you want to accomplish, if you are working with kids that have low reading scores and you want to improve them, you know that using a dog 2 to 3 times a week for 20 minutes at a time, you know you need this kind of a dog. It just helps to tie in that intentionality to the work they’re already doing. We had a woman who was a secretary in a cardiac unit in a hospital, and she wanted to be able to utilize it. So what she was able to do was start to develop an event, like a dog walking event, and then she’s trying to build in where cardiac patients can walk the dogs. Instead of just doing their rehabilitation through … just walking, it gives them sort of an alternative. Here they can walk a rescue dog. It’s giving back. It’s doing something good. It’s not just, “I have to walk around the track.” It’s kind of a fun way to do rehabilitation.

Please explain what you see are the benefits of animal involvement in addressing health and social issues in people of all different ages and backgrounds.

AJ: This one I could talk about for a long time, but I will try to keep it brief. Really, I have to go with an “it depends” (answer) because each person is different. Each population is different. With a lot of the kids I work with in detention, they are kids who struggle with empathy or kids who struggle in areas of relationships or attachments. So we use the dogs to accomplish those goals. We do that through our curriculum. So if the kids are learning about dogs — dog communication, dog body language — let’s talk about how a dog felt when he was surrendered at the shelter. What’s it like for a dog to have to live in this environment where he is locked up in a cage all day? They are able to look at plights through the dog’s perspective. When you have that empathy, the more empathy you have the less likely you are to do something harmful to someone else. If you don’t have any empathy, you don’t mind taking stuff from them, you don’t mind hurting them, you don’t mind because you don’t have that ability to feel. So developing that empathy is really critical when trying to rehabilitate — especially youth.

If you’re working with an elderly population, (the elderly) and dementia patients have had a lot of success with dogs. Sometimes having the animal there, there’s a sensory aspect. A lot of dementia outbursts are suspected to be developing from a lack of sensory stimulation. A dog provides sight, sound, smell, touch, a little bit of everything. So there’s that aspect. Sometimes having a fish aquarium in the dining room of an assisted living facility, they will watch the fish and then it will keep them at the table longer so that they’re eating more so they’re not losing weight. They don’t require as many supplements and vitamins. The cost associated with that person per day goes down. There’s a lot depending on what your goal and objective is.

A lot of kids that I work with, the relationships they develop with their dogs are sometimes the first positive relationship they’ve ever had. When we work at Kingsley Montgomery, being in the school, a lot of the kids have not had positive school experiences. So working with the dogs, just allows them to have positive school experiences. And if you’re in a good mood when you’re in school and you’re wanting to be in school and you’re actually turning up to school, you can learn. You can’t learn if you’re not in school. We’ve had a couple where their home schools were closed for snow, and they could’ve stayed home for a snow day, but they chose to find a ride and get to school so they could work with their dogs. It’s promoting a very positive experience. Hopefully that gives you an idea without talking forever.

You are the director of Teacher’s Pet. Please tell us a bit about the program. What is its purpose? Who does it help? How did it come about? What are the goals of the program? What inspired you to decide that the two together were a good and effective match?

AJ: We started Teacher’s Pet program in 2005, and we began running the program in January of 2006 at Kingsley Montgomery in Waterford. We work with kids there, and we do 10 weeks with 2 hours a day twice a week. So they get one hour each day of learning about dog communication, dog body, you know just what’s going on in the world of dogs and other animals — anything that is tied to humane education. And then the second part is they’re paired with a rescue dog who has behavior problems, and they teach the dog different obedience commands to help the dog become more adoptable. And our goal is to help foster empathy in the kids, impulse control, sense of responsibility and accountability. It’s an altruistic act, something they’re doing to help the dogs in the community and the adoptive families in the community, relationship attachment, those type of things.

When I did my internships for counseling, I was out at Crossroads for Youth in Oxford, and I brought the dog program Teacher’s Pet out there. And we worked in the same type of way: two hours a day, two days a week for 10 weeks where kids get the same dog. It’s just a way to help a dog become more adoptable. And a lot of them don’t have an opportunity to do good things like that in the community. And they’re very, very proud of what they do. It’s something they become better at than a lot of adults. We’re trying to foster — and this will come farther down the road — more vocational training. So when the kids are in the program, and they can stay in the program for a little longer or go through a second phase in the program, they can learn things like dog grooming skills and increased training skills so that when they graduate high school or even during high school they can get a job somewhere working with animals. Or maybe they will want to go onto become dog trainers themselves or (veterinary technicians) or whatnot.

We work out of four facilities: Children’s Village in Waterford, Kingsley Montgomery, Crossroads, and then out at Macomb County Juvenile Justice Center.

How have you seen those involved in the program benefit?

AJ: The dogs benefit immensely just from being more adoptable. People tend to want to adopt dogs who fit right in with the family. They don’t want dogs that are pulling and jumping and barking and knocking people over, lunging at other dogs and whatnot. So we work with the dogs that are temperamentally sound. We don’t take in aggressive dogs. The dog is tested, and if he shows signs of aggression over food or over people or other dogs, then we won’t use that dog. But we get dogs of good temperament who have behavioral problems. So you have kids who struggle behaviorally working with dogs who struggle behaviorally, so that kind of automatically makes a connection there. The kids feel locked up, and the dogs are “locked up.” So they develop an instant connection.

One girl was working with a dog, and the dog had a hard time with her and she had a hard time with the dog. They couldn’t connect. They worked together, and after 2.5 weeks, finally the dog started started coming around. And the two of them started developing a very, very strong bond. She had said initially she had struggled. The dog didn’t trust her, she didn’t trust the dog, but she kept working on it and kept trying and eventually the dog trusted. And she said it got her thinking that maybe if she kept trying with her mom that eventually her mom would trust her again. We use positive training techniques. We reward good behavior, and we don’t punish bad behavior. We use a lot of positive ways to get feedback from the dogs that we want.

So one of the youths had trouble getting along with kids in his unit. He said he took a lot of what we did in class and applied it to his friends or the other kids in the unit. And he said to me, “Ms. Amy, you know how we work with positive training with the dogs and we change how we talk to the dogs so that the dogs can respond better?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Well, I tried that in my unit with my peers, and it actually worked.” So he was able to see that (by) being negative or condescending that he is going to get a negative response. So he switched it based on what he saw in a safer environment with the dogs. He got to practice communicating in a positive way, so when he tried acting positive and using more appropriate ways to get that positive feedback, it really worked. He was able to help reinforce that kind of behavior. And again, these are the kinds of things we have a really, really hard time doing as just therapists. As a therapist, it’s difficult to say, “OK, you need to have empathy. Or you need to think about that you can’t learn empathy cognitively.” You have to experience empathy. And the dogs allow us to do that. I have like 100 stories of dogs who would have never been adopted. When dogs have behavioral challenges, whether they’re really jumpy or very nervous or under-socialized, and they spend too much time in the kennel — which they will because people don’t want to take on those challenging dogs — they develop a lot of neurological and psychological problems where they will have to eventually be euthanized. So the kids can work with the dogs on a regular basis and the dogs learn how to sit when someone approaches or, when they’re getting taken out of the cage, they sit so you can put the leash on. They’re learning how to heel, learning how to walk. Those dogs can get adopted. And I’ve seen a lot of dogs that I didn’t know if they’d have a chance. They made 180-degree turnaround and they became adopted and stay in their homes.

You are also involved with Dog Tags, which is a veteran reintegration and dog training program. Please explain what this program is about and how you became involved with it.

AJ: That one is a little bit newer. We started our first pilot program this past fall. We work with veterans. Our last group had just Iraq (War) veterans, but any veteran can participate in the group. And it’s a 7-week reintegration group. It’s not necessarily a support group or group therapy, but we sort of apply the same principles. We work out of the Oakland County Animal Shelter, and we have the veterans work with dogs who have behavioral challenges. We use the dogs as a way to talk about other issues. A lot of the veterans coming back — once you’ve been trained a certain way in the military — feel they have difficulty with people they once had a strong connection to. The people they were closest to no longer understand them. They haven’t been through the same experiences, and a lot of the veterans start to feel isolated. So this is a way that they can help practice communication skills. They can practice relational skills and ways to reintegrate back into society, into reestablishing relationships that they had previously. We do that through a once-a-week, 2-hour group.

It falls under our Teacher’s Pet umbrella. Another student in the Counseling Department — we graduated together from the program. He is a vet. He was in Iraq. He did two tours and some additional work. So he understands the veterans from a personal standpoint. We got to talking about doing some groups, and he knew what I did with the dogs. So I asked him about incorporating dogs, and he loved the idea. My dad is a Vietnam vet and talking to a lot of his friends, having a dog really did a lot for them. A lot of times, it was having that friend they could talk to or having to take care of another being forced them to take better care of themselves. I talked with Larry Obrecht at the Oakland County Animal Shelter, and he loved the idea. And he helped get us in with the Oakland County VA, (52-1 District Court) Veterans Court, and Oakland has a veterans services organization. So we’ve just done a lot of putting the program flyers and doing presentations in different facilities. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on that, so we will continue with that in January and really fine-tune that program.

Both of these programs involve training dogs. Where do you get the dogs that are trained? What happens to the dogs after the program is completed?

AJ: All of our dogs come from rescues. We have dogs that come from Oakland County Animal Control, Macomb County Animal Control, and K-9 Stray Rescue in Oxford.

They are available for adoption. We try to get the dogs adopted while they’re still in training. I like for the kids to be able to meet the prospective adopters. The kids always want to know what families are like, and it’s a great opportunity for them to practice skills communicating with adults and where the kids are more the expert on the dogs than the people are. So ideally we get all the paperwork, everything situated, and then at graduation they can take the dogs home. We don’t let the dogs go before graduation because it’s confusing for the kids. It’s just better to have the dogs in the whole time. So some get adopted right away, and some still have a hard time. And a lot of the dogs that we get even after working with the dogs for 10 weeks, the dogs have made a lot of progress, but they still aren’t at a place yet where they have eliminated a lot of the negative behaviors. So sometimes we’ll take a dog again, and we will use them for a second round, but I don’t like to keep them in the shelter for too long.

Other times, dogs if they are older — we get a lot of dogs that are 6- or 7- or 8-years-old — and a lot of people think we can’t train older dogs, which we absolutely can. We’ve done it numerous times, but a lot of people want to adopt a younger dog. So when we get the dogs that are older, we have a hard time. They do stay a little longer in the shelter, but they are available for adoption. A lot of them we stay in touch with. We get letters, cards from the families that had adopted the dogs.

What has been one of the most rewarding things you have gained out of being involved in these programs?

AJ: It’s hard to pick one. I find that while it’s intended to be therapeutic for other individuals, it is equally as therapeutic for me. I could have the worst day ever, but being able to watch the kids smile and laugh and really let their guard down and watch how they interact with the dogs, it’s amazing to watch. You have kids who are hardened by society because of where they’ve come from; they have developed a hard shell and it’s hard for them to let anyone in because they have not had positive experiences with adults in the past. They’ve not had positive experiences much in general. So you see them and watch the wall slowly come down. You see them laying on the floor and hugging their dogs. Or you see them talking baby talk to their dog. Or sometimes they’ll even, when they think no one is watching, climb into the kennel with the dog to say goodbye. When you see the kids in that light, it totally changes how you see them. You don’t look at them as their behavior, which a lot of people do. When a kid is acting this way or he’s got a smart mouth, or he’s always provoking others, you tend to look at the kids that way. But when you see them in their most vulnerable, it helps to see them in a different light. When you’re doing any type of therapy or when you are talking to students, the staff will see the kids in that light now, too, so it changes that aspect, and they can understand the kids a little differently. So it changes the relationship between the staff and the youths.

But there’s so many really positive stories from kids who have changed just a little bit. One of the kids we had, his social worker had tried talking to him for years. He’d been in the school a couple years, and she tried talking to him and he didn’t really have much to say to her. He was a very, very quiet kid. He was a very introverted kid. But once he got his dogs or, on this particular day, one of our volunteers brought in kittens that she had found in a dumpster. They were a few weeks old, and she had to feed them every couple hours. So he was like, “Can I help feed them?” She said yeah and gave him the little bottle. He’s feeding the babies, and he walked right into the social worker’s office, sat down with the kittens, and started talking to her. He spent 15, 20 minutes, and she was stunned. She’s like, “Two years, I’ve been trying to talk to this kid. And all it took was a couple kittens.” But she had already laid down all the groundwork. He wouldn’t have gone into her if he didn’t already feel something for her, feel that he could trust her, but it’s very difficult when you’re sitting one-on-one, staring eye-to-eye. A kid feels kind of on the spot. This a kind of way to take the attention off what they feel (is) an interrogation, and it becomes more of a relationship.

Finally, what can people to get involved with or to support any of these programs? Where can they get more information?

AJ: Our website is teacherspetmichigan.org. There’s volunteer application there. There’s links on ways to donate or to help. Of course, we always need volunteer help. We can’t run these kinds of programs by ourselves. There’s 10 kids, five dogs. So we like to have a lot of volunteers there who can just kind of help us oversee things so the dogs aren’t getting in scuffles with each other, and we still have to keep an eye on the kids. Just having multiple adults in the room is really good, too, for the kids to get used to different types of adults. So we always like to have volunteers. Of course, financial donations are always welcomed, too. We have to pay for some of the kenneling that we do, dog food, our harnesses and leashes, and other equipment, stuff for the kids. Any type of monetary donation is great. We also take dog food, blankets, towels, leashes, treats, notebooks. The kids like to write in their notebooks. Any type of in-kind donation. We have a list of items to donate on that website, as well. We’ve had some very positive feedback from the community. And they’ve been very supportive of us in the past, which we appreciate.