Four-Legged Colleagues

BY MEGAN RUBINER ZINN

Cover photo: Annie Sexauer poses with her horse at her Whately, MA farm where she has a private practice.

Like many mental health practitioners, Smith College School for Social work alumnae Annie Sexauer, Judith Saeks Gable and Kate Nicoll have two offices. Unlike most of their colleagues, while one of these offices is conventional, the other includes such features as barns, hay, pastures, horses, dogs and guinea pigs. “It’s a little awkward,” Gable said about the route to her office. “You have to walk through some horse poop.”

Sexauer, M.S.W. ’11, LICSW, Gable, M.S.W. ’80, LCSW, and Nicoll, M.S.W. ’89 all practice animalassisted therapy (AAT), hence the unusual office environments.

Sexauer grew up with horses and looked for careers that allowed her to work with them. She began as a therapeutic riding instructor, often assisting clinicians. Drawn to their work, she earned her degree at SSW and now has a private practice on her small farm in Whately, Massachusetts. She also works with veterans in a therapeutic riding program at the Therapeutic Equestrian Center in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Although she grew up riding horses, Gable came to AAT later in her career, which has included a private practice and work in nonprofit mental health, training and supervising graduate students treating high-risk adolescents. Gable reconnected with horses several years ago and began looking for opportunities to work more closely with them. She now volunteers at Horse and Heart Ranch in Soquel, California, working with foster youth and developmentally disabled adults, and maintains a practice at the ranch.

Nicoll, who had practiced in a variety of therapeutic settings, became interested in AAT through personal experience. She was widowed as a young woman with three children and several years later contracted the Epstein-Barr virus, which caused partial paralysis. Throughout, she was struck by her dog’s instincts when she needed comfort and the positive effects he had on her. After undertaking research and training on AAT, she and a partner started Soul Friends in Wallingford, Connecticut. Soul Friends provides individual therapy, a dog training and social skill building program for special needs kids, a group therapy program for at-risk children and an equine program for adolescent girls living with loss, trauma and social-emotional challenges.

Sexauer, Gable and Nicoll have found that AAT is effective with a wide range of clients: people with special needs, who have anxiety, who have experienced trauma or who do not respond to traditional therapy. Sexauer also noted that AAT is great for clients who are more movement oriented: “Anyone who does not want to sit and stare at me for 45 minutes,” she said.

Judith Saeks Gable uses animal-assisted therapy in her work with foster youth and developmentally disabled adults.

According to another SSW alum, Froma Walsh, M.S.W. ’70, Ph.D., and emerita social work professor at the University of Chicago, “Animalassisted therapy involves the carefully planned and monitored use of the therapist’s companion animal in sessions to build rapport, enhance the therapeutic process and facilitate positive change.” (“Human-Animal Bonds I: The Relational Significance of Companion Animals.”)

Kate Nicoll cofounded Soul Friends in Wallingford, CT after contracting Epstein-Barr virus.

AAT can include having a dog in therapy sessions to help lower the cli- ent’s anxiety or to serve as a sounding board for a client, who may talk to the dog rather than directly to the therapist. It could be the experience of being in a peaceful farm environment, feeding chickens, walking outside. It may involve skill and confidence building in learning to handle animals. It may include groundwork with equines—grooming, feeding, walking and interacting with them. It can also, but not necessarily, include riding.

The benefits of AAT are as varied as the clients and the specific characteristics of the animals, and the impact can be quick and profound. “I receive referrals for kids who have multiple diagnoses and who are on many medications,” said Nicoll. “They come and they’re calm, they’re interactive, they’re empathetic—they are truly at their best selves when they’re interacting with an animal.”

As prey animals, horses are attuned to humans’ behavior and emotions, since their survival depends on this, and they react to people quite honestly. On one hand, if they come to you, it’s because they trust you. “That can be really empowering because that’s something that you had to earn. On the other hand, if they don’t trust you, they’ll simply walk away, which can force someone to look at their behavior and emotions. They’re very accurate as mirrors,” Sexauer said.

Gable agreed: “If you come in acting like you’re happy and friendly, but you’re actually preoccupied and upset, they’ll go away. They pick up that there’s something wrong and dangerous.” This can help a client examine themselves. “‘What am I really feeling right now? What am I really thinking right now? I’m acting like I’m happy and friendly, but am I actually communicating something different?’”

Animals are excellent models of non-verbal communication and interpersonal behavior, especially pack animals. Gable finds it useful for clients to pay careful attention to how horses communicate with each other. “If one horse feels another is too close, first they’ll give a series of signals—swish their tail, then pin their ears back. If the other horse isn’t responding, they’ll turn around and kick or bite. It’s like ‘I told you three times and now I mean it.’ And then they’re friends again, like it was nothing.” The horse communicates and sets a boundary, but it doesn’t hold a grudge.

For a variety of reasons, AAT can be very effective with people who have experienced trauma. For some, it helps them regain a feeling of empowerment. Being around a horse who is enormous but gentle and who the client can control, is often helpful. It can also help clients practice tolerating their anxiety around something so big. “Anyone who’s got a trauma history has probably been overpowered at some point and this flips that,” said Sexauer. “You’re smaller but you can absolutely be safe and even influence these giant creatures.”

Further, because horses are prey animals, they are always on guard and startle easily, much like some people who have experienced trauma. “They react pretty big to anything that feels dangerous and just as quickly they will go back to grazing and into a calm state,” said Gable. Seeing how the horse deals with this can be very instructive for a client. “They’re a huge animal that looks like they should be able to defend themselves, but they startle easily,” Gable said. “‘Okay, then I shouldn’t be ashamed about my startle response. If they can go back to a state of calm quickly, how might I be able to do that?’”

Identifying with a prey animal can also help a client normalize their own response to trauma. Nicoll tells of working with a group of boys who would play with guinea pigs and pay attention to their reactions. One client picked up on the nervous release of urine that Guinea pigs often display and was able to relate it to his own reaction during a traumatic experience. The whole group was able to support him in the therapeutic space and say, ‘No, of course something would happen like that when you saw something horrible.’”

Sexauer believes working with horses can help people overcome past traumas.

Sexauer, Gable and Nicoll, as well as Walsh, are emphatic that therapists shouldn’t attempt to employ AAT without specialized training, to ensure they understand both the animal behavior and the complicated ways a human might respond. “When people respond to it, it can be very potent and powerful and it can work very quickly,” Sexauer said. “People can dive very deeply into the experience, especially with dissociation or active flashbacks. You want to be very careful of the experience you’re introducing.”

The AAT practitioners agree that working with animals has impacted their respective careers even when no animal is involved. They may have a better understanding of clients’ non-verbal communication, better recognition of the way clients read them like an animal might or it may remind them to meet the client where they are, as an animal will do. Working in partnership with animals can also help them recognize that the client’s experience isn’t theirs. “When you work with another person and the horse, a lot of that work isn’t yours anymore, so there’s a letting go” Sexauer said. “When you’re with a client and a horse they can be having such intensity that it’s very clear it’s not your process. It feels good and right.” ◆