The Truth About Emotional Support Animals

I have seen countless articles, blog posts, books, and podcasts that tout the healing power of animals in recovery from eating disorders and other mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression. There is another side to this story, though. If your experience with an animal has not been entirely healing, you are not alone. Sometimes animals can have the opposite effect that we intend – they can exacerbate our anxieties, cause immeasurable sadness and grief, and deepen our feelings of unworthiness and failure. They can create trauma as challenging to cope with as the trauma with which we meant for them to help us cope.

I have been around animals for most of my life. Some of them have saved my life through their emotional support, while others have made my life far more challenging. In addition to the animals that I describe below, we had wonderful guinea pigs, fish, a rabbit, and a hamster, but they were less influential on my emotional state and wellbeing. Rather, I describe the two family dogs with whom I grew up and the three animals that I adopted after I moved away from home for graduate school.

Dylan – Teacup Poodle – 3 lbs

When my family welcomed me to my home from the hospital as a newborn, I was entering a family with a mom, a dad, an older sister (almost 2 years old), an older brother (5 years old), and a canine older brother, Dylan (about 7 years old). Dylan, a teacup poodle, was the perfect dog, a member of the family. He was extremely well-behaved. He silently followed my mom around, napped wherever the sun shined in through a window and slept in the dirty laundry collection in my parents’ closet. He obeyed every command he received, he was kind and gentle, he was peaceful and quiet. He was a loved member of the family. In fact, when I was learning to speak, my mom kept a log of the words I was saying, and apparently, I said, “Dylan,” before I even said “Dad.”

His death when I was six years old was my first real experience of trauma. Our neighbors had a very aggressive Husky, who escaped from their yard. One night, when my father took Dylan outside to go to the bathroom, this powerful wolf-like creature attacked our little three-pound dog. He bit Dylan in the neck, killing him before my dad could intervene. In my young brain, I understood this to mean the Husky decapitated Dylan. I drew creepy images of headless dogs for a long time, and my mom tells the story that until we got a new dog, all I would do is bark and whine like a dog to communicate. I stopped talking until my parents adopted our next family dog – my new brother, a Bichon Frise named Sambuca after a town in Sicily from where many of my ancestors came.

Dylan

Sambuca – Bichon Frise – 18 lbs

Although Sambuca was much more rambunctious and difficult to train than Dylan, he was also a very good dog. He exuded mischief, adventure, excitement, and energy. He gave me abundant kisses (especially after soccer practice or when I was crying, when I was deliciously salty). He was outrageously happy to go for short walks around the block and play hide-and-go-seek in the house. He waited with us for the bus to take us to school and ran to greet us with love and excitement when we got home. He was an extremely energetic, excited, and joyous dog, and he brought so much delight to our lives. He passed away when I was a junior in college. His death devastated me and may have contributed to the onset of my eating disorder. (My college boyfriend encouraged me to deal with grief by [over]exercising.)

Sambuca

Sambuca

Milo and Otis – Rats — <1 lb each

After college, I moved away from home, and my eating disorder continued to escalate until I admitted myself into residential treatment. Remembering the joy, love, and comfort that Dylan and Sambuca brought to my life, I decided to adopt an animal. Although I did not think I could care for a dog while in graduate school, I did want an animal who would interact socially with me, so I decided to adopt rats. I adopted two rats – brothers, and I named them Milo and Otis, after two of my favorite characters from one of my favorite children’s movies.  My psychiatrist prescribed them as emotional support rats, and boy they were. Otis taught me to love treats, be adventurous, and be brave, while Milo was always available to snuggle me when things in my life got so hard that I felt a panic attack coming on or was struggling with thoughts of self-harm (e.g. after being sexually assaulted and then stalked by someone who I trusted). They kept me alive during one of the hardest seasons of my life. Years after their deaths, I continue to grieve them and miss them every single day.

Milo and Otis

Juniper – Lab Shepherd Mix – 76.2 lbs

When I felt that I needed even more unconditional love and support to heal and I graduated with my Master’s degree, I decided to adopt a dog. Although the dogs I had grown up with and loved were small dogs, I decided that I wanted a larger breed dog. I had always fantasized about having a black Labrador. I imagined that she would be a more temperate dog than Sambuca (many large breed dogs have reputations for being calmer and well-behaved) and a dog who could be a hiking partner. Thus, on May 21, 2016, I adopted a puppy from the Rocky Mountain Puppy Rescue. They guessed that she is a lab shepherd mix. She was the most precious creature I had ever seen. I loved her at first sight. I was ready for her to fill the hole I felt that was missing from the love and compassion that I needed.

Like me, however, my dog is imperfect, and she has not provided me with the support for which I longed. Rather, she has caused a lot more stress in my life. Like me, Juniper has pretty severe generalized anxiety. This prevents her from going on walks unless she is with more than one person, and, worse, it causes her to bark incessantly, especially throughout the middle of the night.

My partner and I have tried countless things to calm her and cut her barking. We tried a few negative reinforcement ideas – spraying her with water when she barks, scolding her when she barks and using a collar that vibrates and beeps when she barks. None of those options aligned with my value of compassion, though, and they did not work anyway.

We have mostly tried positive reinforcement techniques. We have addressed her needs and desires. For example, we have tried exhausting her physically and mentally by increasing our level of daily physical activity with her, providing her with countless interactive toys, increasing the time we spend training her, signing her up for weekly play-care, and hiring a walker to walk her each of the rest of my workdays. We have tried to make sure we take care of all of her basic necessities before bed by taking her outside immediately before bedtime and trying our hardest to make sure that she eats and drinks well before bedtime. This often means that my partner hand feeds her dog food or arranges it elaborately in a cone-shaped bone and an everlasting treat wheel.

We have controlled her sensory environment the best we can. We have tried to cut the visual triggers in her environment by obstructing her access to the windows in the bedrooms (through furniture rearrangements) and by putting up a bamboo barrier to obstruct her view through the balcony’s sliding glass door. We have tried having the lights completely off, the lights completely on, and even night-lights. We have also tried to reduce the audible triggers in her environment by making it a daily routine to turn on Pandora after work, turning up the volume on a white-noise sound machine at bedtime, and purchasing Mutt Muffs to cover her ears. We even purchased both a window fan and a room air conditioner to both block out sounds and create a cooler environment in which we thought she would be more comfortable. We introduced scents and tastes that are supposed to be calming, including a pheromone collar, a lavender plug-in air freshener, an Adaptil plug-in, and a variety of “calming treats.” We have tried to offer her comforting touches, too, including a T-Touch harness, a T-Touch wrap, T-Touches, a couple different types of calming shirts and coats, and physical embraces.

We have turned to professionals for advice. She has taken multiple group dog behavior classes, and we hired private trainers specifically to help reduce her barking. They worked with us for a while before admitting defeat and referring us to a veterinarian behaviorist. The trainers and vet behaviorists taught us a relaxation protocol that I practiced with Juniper. We also followed their advice to give her treats when something triggers her or when she is behaving well and being quiet. The vet behaviorist (and her regular veterinarian before that) have prescribed countless strong anti-anxiety and sedation medications: sertraline, clonazepam, clonidine, trazodone, gabapentin, paroxetine, diazepam, and alprazolam to name a few. Nothing has worked.

As I sit here typing, I am shaking. It is taking all of my strength to resist my strong urges to use maladaptive coping mechanisms – restrict and self-harm. As usual, on days that I have nobody to walk with, I took Juniper to one of the local dog parks. This trip to the dog park was not filled with playful ball-fetching, drooling, and tail wags, though. Rather this time she exhibited the worst behavior she ever has. This time, a very small, nine-pound dog ran up to Juniper, and without a warning or hesitation, Juniper attacked – much like I imagine the attack that killed Dylan. Luckily, I was right next to her, and my body provided a rush of adrenaline that gave me the strength to pull her off right away. As he stood there yelling and swearing at me, I begged the dog’s owner to reassure me that his dog was okay and to tell me what to do to help. He told me he did not think his dog was going to be okay and that there was nothing I could do. I would not accept that answer, so I took them to the vet, and I paid for the appointment. The dog got checked out, and the little guy is absolutely fine. He only had a few small abrasions and no signs of any internal damage. It must have been scary for him; it was certainly terrifying for me, and it confirmed to me that I am a failure of a dog-mom. I have never felt so disappointed in myself or in an animal who I love.

However, when the trainers, veterinarians, or pharmacists thank me for not giving up on her – for trying so hard to help her – I know I am doing the right thing. Maybe she was not meant to help me heal. Maybe I was meant to patiently empathize with her anxiety and thus help her heal. Maybe I need to heal myself so that I am capable of helping her heal. I guess, in a way, she has saved me. On days when life seems too hard, I wonder who would keep trying to help her if I was not here, and I decide to stay. She has given my life some purpose. Although it sometimes feels like she hates me when she barks during the middle of the night, her excitement when I walk in the door after a long day at work and her eagerness to “find Mommy” during games of hide-and-seek remind me that she loves me. I love her, too.

Juniper

Please share your experiences with animals while in recovery from an eating disorder or another mental health struggle! How have your animals helped you cope or caused you pain?