Calm in the chaos: Life of a therapy dog volunteer

Cindy Dutmers loves dogs and loves to help people. While volunteering at West Michigan Therapy Dogs, Inc., she can do both. Through their visits, Dutmers and her canine partner Meia quietly change the atmosphere of hospitals, veteran’s homes, schools, nursing homes, and hospice care, bringing nothing with them except a profound sense of peace.

Cindy has a kind smile and gentle demeanor, and has volunteered at WMTD, Inc. for six years. People naturally swarm around her and Meia in public, and when Meia is officially working as a therapy dog, the invitation to pet her is almost too strong to resist. As visitors crowd around, Dutmers patiently explains for perhaps the millionth time the difference between a therapy dog and a service dog (service dogs are for one specific person, therapy dogs are for many people). She tells them how old (four years) and what breed Meia is (Doberman Pinscher), and then sits contentedly and lets Meia’s elegant nose, bright eyes, and soft fur do the talking.

For her part, Meia is the picture of good behavior. She stands still and lets many hands smooth her glossy coat over and over. She never bites and hardly ever barks. She doesn’t mind being hugged and she does not get overwhelmed by new people, locations, or even other dogs, a trait Dutmers calls being “dog neutral.”

When people first encounter Meia and other therapy dogs, their reaction is usually a large smile followed by a hand reaching, almost automatically, to pet her. Then they stay and chat with Dutmers, or simply sit in silence and play with Meia for a bit. Their visits have a profound effect, bringing new life and peace to difficult situations. Meia’s charms work on everyone from physical therapy patients struggling with hard recoveries to retired veterans longing for a familiar face.

Although Meia appears relaxed during these sessions, Dutmers knows the truth: being a therapy dog is hard and demanding work. “Do you know when a dog yawns it’s a stressor?” she explains to the crowd around Meia. “The work is very stressful for them… They can only work two hours [at a time].”

Outside of their official therapy visits, Dutmers said that Meia acts like a regular dog. “This is not the dog I live with,” she says, gesturing to angelic Meia. “At home she is a true guard dog. It’s like when you get dressed for work, you don’t talk like you do with your friends. You take on a different persona. I put her vest on her, and she becomes ‘Therapy Dog!’ ”

The requirements for therapy dogs are strict. Prospective dogs (and their owners) must go through a pre-screening to be admitted to an intense, eight-week class which Dutmers teaches. The dogs must be re-tested every two years after completing their training, and not all of the current 350 registered dogs of WMTD, Inc. will continue to pass. The stress of the job and disposition of the animal can cause a therapy dog to be retired early.

“One [therapy dog] was going into a facility she goes into all the time, and she got to the steps and stopped and started shaking,” Dutmers said. “That dog was retired at that point. Doesn’t matter how bad you want to do it, if your dog’s not up for it, you don’t do it.”

To prevent this burnout, Dutmers is careful to balance Meia’s stressful days with more lighthearted outings. “She has play dates, she goes to PetSmart, dog parks—I  try to keep her really well-rounded.”

Meia works 5-9 times a month on average, which means Dutmers is there at her side, volunteering her own time and energy to help Meia bring joy to others. A longtime dog owner herself, Dutmers is still in awe of the way dogs can sense things that people cannot. “She is drawn to the really sick,” said Dutmers about Meia.

“We were visiting some friends on the other side of the state, a husband and wife in their seventies. The wife repeatedly wanted to pet [Meia], but she kept walking away and going back to the husband, who had terminal stomach cancer. [Meia] was touching him all the time… And he died two weeks later. [Meia] was totally focused on him.”

No matter how difficult a situation may be, it seems that when Dutmers and Meia walk into the room, each heart gets a little lighter. Calm in the chaos is found, it seems, in four paws and a kind smile.

For more information about West Michigan Therapy Dogs, Inc. visit www.wmtd.org.