Animals, partners build better people

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

This time of year, many faith communities hold a ceremony called the Blessing of the Animals. For the rest of the year, of course, animals do the blessing, whether it's watching the sheep, walking the blind or just being best pals.

No one knows that better than the Larimer Animal-People Partnership, a group that's been active in northern Colorado for 15 years. The group is affiliated with the Delta Society, a national organization dedicated to promoting the human-animal bond.

Many people have likely seen LAPP members and their animal friends around town. The group sponsors the annual Doggie Olympics at City Park, and they hold three reading sessions each month at public libraries in Fort Collins and Longmont. At these popular sessions, youngsters are encouraged to read books to the animals, which could be dogs, cats, a bird or even a pony.

LAPP members, who include about 50 people and their certified therapy animals, also put in hundreds of volunteer hours every year with groups who have specific challenges or disabilities. They visit Crossroads Safehouse for battered women and their children, Wings residential treatment center, a Loveland group home for adults with developmental disabilities, an adoption support group, nursing homes and schools.

In each of these settings, the LAPP animals have a big challenge: to pass along some of their unconditional love and use it to heal, to teach and to bring people together. "They are the furry or feathered bridges to pull groups together," said Amy Fristoe of Wellington, one of LAPP's early members. As anyone who regularly walks a dog knows, animals can open up conversation and build commonality between people who never met each other before.

LAPP, explained Fristoe, is "all about building character in our community." She is an ardent proponent of using animals to bring out the best in people, a concept she practices every day in her work. A special education teacher at Moore Elementary, Fristoe has brought her labs to work with her for years.

At school, the dogs are very effective in connecting children who have special needs with other children. They also help to keep Fristoe's students happy. "The humor that they bring is huge," she said. "We can have crabby, upset kids, and the animal does something funny that lightens the atmosphere and turns around an unpleasant situation."

LAPP members have seen some rewarding results during their pet visitations, as well. At Crossroads Safehouse, volunteers work on modeling a nurturing relationship with the animals; they reward good behavior and do not use punitive corrections.

"It's our attempt to stop the cycle of abuse," Fristoe noted. During the sessions, youngsters sometimes bring up their fears about pets left behind at home, and this opens therapeutic opportunities for the children and their counselors.

At Wings, which is home to many teens with behavioral issues, LAPP members set up a competitive board game which teams up two residents, a dog and a counselor. To win, the teens have to work cooperatively with their partners. At one Wings session, LAPP members observed that teens developed an empathy with both the "senior citizen" dogs on one team and very young dogs on another team. It is LAPP's hope that some of this empathy and patience will transfer to relationships with other people.

The children at a local adoption support group have also benefited from interacting with LAPP animals. When they learn that some of the pets have been adopted from shelters, the youngsters start talking about their own adoption experiences.

Fristoe explained why the human-animal connection is so special. "It's a very primitive thing," she said, going back to cavemen and their domesticated wolves or Egyptians and their cats. "The magic comes from unconditional love. Animals are never judgmental, and they don't care about ethnicity, race, religion or socio-economic status. However, they do care about nurturing behavior."

LAPP welcomes new members. People may bring their own pets or borrow other LAPP animals to work with. LAPP also holds training workshops. For more information about LAPP, people may call Fristoe at 568-3379.