Dogs on campus: Lessons learned from 10 years overseeing canine-assisted interventions and programming

John-Tyler Binfet Author

04/26/2022 Added

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This is a recording of Dr. John-Tyler Binfet's presentation for the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation given on April 22, 2022.

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[00:00:00.769]Jeffrey Stevens: it's time for our final speaker your last presentation for the for the symposium and our final speaker is Dr John-Tyler Binfet who holds a PhD in educational and counseling psychology from the University of British Columbia and, was a former school teacher and school counselor.
[00:00:19.760]Jeffrey Stevens: His in his current role, Dr Ben fit is an associate professor and the director for the Center for mindful engagement in the Faculty of education at ubc.
[00:00:29.060]Jeffrey Stevens: he's also the founder and director of UV sees building academic retention through canines get it get it.
[00:00:38.090]Jeffrey Stevens: So, Dr Binfet wins the award for the coolest dog related acronym for his research group we all as researchers like bash our heads against the wall to try to come up with a clever dog related acronym and name our labs after that, and most of us fail, but Dr Binfetsucceeded just wonderful.
[00:00:59.810]Jeffrey Stevens: As part of this bark program Dr Ben fit routinely overseas 60 therapy dogs brought into campus and supportive student stress reduction.
[00:01:08.660]Jeffrey Stevens: his recent co authored book on can't canine assisted interventions is a how to manual exploring the characteristics and assessment of therapy dog handler teams.
[00:01:19.850]Jeffrey Stevens: Dr been fed serves as the Chair of the Development Committee for the international society for anthropology I keep hearing this I SAS their time we actually managed to get like I think half of the Executive Committee, for I says here in the symposium which is pretty pretty amazing.
[00:01:35.780]Jeffrey Stevens: When not researching the effects of canine interventions, Dr been fed researches school related a school situated kindness in his new book cultivating kindness he showcases findings from his research.
[00:01:46.520]Jeffrey Stevens: Asking over 3000 students about what it means to be kind and school.
[00:01:51.500]Jeffrey Stevens: Dr been fed passion for therapy dogs, combined with this advocacy for student well being and kindness is showcased in his blog on psychology today in a blog titled canine kids and kindness so give that give that a follow please join me in welcoming Dr been fed.
[00:02:08.060]John-Tyler Binfet: Thank you, Dr Stevens, and thank you for this invitation and for including me in the symposium it's my pleasure to be here folks good afternoon i'm on if you can believe it on my way to come and see you I tested positive for covert at the airport and so.
[00:02:26.390]John-Tyler Binfet: i'm sort of grappling with the effects and i'd asked you to bear with me on that and we'll get through the next hour and i'll showcase some of the work that I do at the University of British Columbia.
[00:02:35.420]John-Tyler Binfet: The title of my talk is dogs on campus lessons learned from 10 years overseeing canine assisted interventions and programming.
[00:02:45.200]John-Tyler Binfet: And again it's my pleasure to be here there's some social media contacts here, if you want to follow the bark program on instagram with a robust following and there's lots of different updates and.
[00:02:55.850]John-Tyler Binfet: They have to mention the work that i'm going to present today is funded in part by the Canadian Government to incite development grant and insight grant that's funds this work okay let's um let's dive in.
[00:03:10.970]John-Tyler Binfet: i'm sharing knowledge with you today and and visiting.
[00:03:14.690]John-Tyler Binfet: Virtually from the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the silks okanagan people on which the University of British Columbia okanagan campuses located.
[00:03:24.170]John-Tyler Binfet: I acknowledge equally that i'm a virtual visitor hundred your the land on which University of nebraska Lincoln is located and respectfully share knowledge with you today.
[00:03:37.430]John-Tyler Binfet: that's what actually what our campus looks like if you can imagine perched up on a kind of a hill it's super picture so.
[00:03:43.430]John-Tyler Binfet: Really, I tell you, if there, we have an open door policy and if anybody in the audience wants to come in and do an internship or come and.
[00:03:52.370]John-Tyler Binfet: visit the bark program in operation you're more than welcome to just reach out and connect with us okay here's what we're in for this afternoon folks i'm going to give you a little bit of.
[00:04:01.880]John-Tyler Binfet: Information about my background, as it informs my work i'm going to tell you about the history of the bark program and then.
[00:04:10.070]John-Tyler Binfet: we're just gearing up for our 10th year anniversary so i've sort of compiled some lessons learned that i'll share with you from overseeing the program on campus and in the Community.
[00:04:22.760]John-Tyler Binfet: As as Jeff mentioned, I have sort of a bifurcated research research stream I spend.
[00:04:30.020]John-Tyler Binfet: almost equal time asking students in school about what they believe about kindness, how they conceptualize kindness.
[00:04:38.240]John-Tyler Binfet: i've done some psychometric work on kindness measuring kindness and done some rct on kindness interventions, but mostly i'm curious about capturing how students understand and kindness and then the other hat that I wear that we'll talk about today focuses on.
[00:04:55.010]John-Tyler Binfet: The dog work that I do and so you'll hear lots about that I write a lot about kindness and I try to challenge adult assumptions around.
[00:05:04.010]John-Tyler Binfet: Explaining kindness by countering with students narratives of what it means to be kind and how they understand kindness, so I try to do a lot of that to honor student voice.
[00:05:15.470]John-Tyler Binfet: As as Jeff mentioned, I write for psychology today and try to really establish the link between kindness and mental health and then also between therapy dogs and well being in university students, so I encourage you to check that out if that's in your wheelhouse.
[00:05:32.180]John-Tyler Binfet: So my methodology with kindness is really I think simple direct I asked students to reflect on kindness they've done in the past.
[00:05:41.690]John-Tyler Binfet: Or will do interventions, where we ask them to plan and execute kind acts in the future and here's a not out to Harry styles, who is main stage coachella week number two tonight as a matter of fact, if you're a fan.
[00:05:56.480]John-Tyler Binfet: And here we have a secondary grade drawing if the little guys can't fill out surveys and whatnot typically from kindergarten through third grade i'll ask them to draw we use a drawing telling methodology.
[00:06:07.850]John-Tyler Binfet: So here we have a female protagonist her hair blowing in the wind.
[00:06:11.360]John-Tyler Binfet: And she's helping someone up and we do in situ coding, so we asked them always well who's in this drawing because sometimes it's chicken scratch and it's not evident.
[00:06:20.570]John-Tyler Binfet: And so, will she says that's me in a friend, and then we write verbatim what they say when we say well what's happening here in this drawing and so she's i'm helping someone up when they fell.
[00:06:31.400]John-Tyler Binfet: And then for older students had lessons for example I love working with middle school high school students and.
[00:06:37.550]John-Tyler Binfet: They just have wonderfully revealing and rich insights into how they're kind what is an example of something you have done recently that shows you were kind to yourself, told the truth to someone when I did something wrong.
[00:06:51.320]John-Tyler Binfet: became friends with a person who is socially outcast and stop talking when other people are, and these are what we call socially and emotional really rich examples of.
[00:07:01.850]John-Tyler Binfet: kindness and so I sort of challenge the assumption of adolescence is kind of mired in conflict and egocentric and try to debunk that myth, a little bit with some kindness research.
[00:07:14.930]John-Tyler Binfet: Here I asked for definitions of kindness and so this fourth grader rights to be kind is to make other people feel included happy and often gives them the courage to be open and friendly.
[00:07:26.180]John-Tyler Binfet: And then there was a study published looking at were in school bullying happened, the most so I thought, well, we need a kindness study that looks at location.
[00:07:33.590]John-Tyler Binfet: So I asked kids in this this guy says by the trees near the field fence very specific on where kindness happens.
[00:07:39.950]John-Tyler Binfet: And then of course middle school kids are always kind of cheeky and I have great sense of humor and this one writes, what does it mean to be kind of.
[00:07:45.800]John-Tyler Binfet: Being Nice and only bullying your brothers and sisters, so I get a real kick out of the dog work, but I really get a kick out of the kindness work with with students and as.
[00:07:56.060]John-Tyler Binfet: Jeff mentioned, I got to put the shameless plug in if you're at all curious and if you're a graduate student wanting to work in kindness be sure to reach out because i'm always happy to talk to folks about that alright.
[00:08:05.540]John-Tyler Binfet: So i'm a researcher who walks the talk, this is my pack here and so i'm often found on campus with these guys trailing around Craig a three legged rescue from Mexico phyllis a three legged back leg amputee from Taiwan.
[00:08:21.320]John-Tyler Binfet: Francis the street dog from La and Nora a street dog from Iran and i'll start my talk today with just an anecdote i'm.
[00:08:30.410]John-Tyler Binfet: i'm supposed to use leashes on campus and I don't always the dogs are typically very well behaved and follow me and I don't in particular use a leash with Craig here because it gets hooked on a stump and so.
[00:08:42.080]John-Tyler Binfet: I was on campus not long ago and had entered the elevator and was quickly going to up to the third floor to my office and noticed I did I was missing a dog missing Craig.
[00:08:54.710]John-Tyler Binfet: And peeked out of the elevator and Lo and behold Craig who's super connected to me and devoted to to me and sticks with me had perceived a student who was in distress and I find him.
[00:09:11.420]John-Tyler Binfet: An engineering student hovered over top of Craig just sobbing.
[00:09:15.830]John-Tyler Binfet: And I love this as an illustration of Craig making this determination that guide needs me more than I needed to follow you in the elevator.
[00:09:24.320]John-Tyler Binfet: And so we'll sort of unpack some of this stuff and maybe look at some empirical evidence that and test to the sort of the special talents of these dogs and he listening.
[00:09:34.550]John-Tyler Binfet: Well, being outcomes in in students so okay So what are we in for this afternoon we're in I want you to start to just conjure up the image of cpr can you just bring to the forefront your understanding.
[00:09:48.110]John-Tyler Binfet: Of cpr okay everybody have that we're in for a little emotional cpr this afternoon, so police officer goes down.
[00:10:22.880]John-Tyler Binfet: Did you see the queuing of the handler to redirect the dog there and the checking policy is just lovely so we're in for today a little bit of.
[00:10:30.110]John-Tyler Binfet: emotional cpr we started close the symposium so like some of you in the audience, I was trained as a psychologist to wait for individuals to sink, and then to sweep in with these.
[00:10:43.640]John-Tyler Binfet: Wonderful remedies and solutions and we still do some of that work but mostly my work has been focused in sort of inflating the LIFE fest of students, so that they can be resilient in the face of hiccups.
[00:10:57.110]John-Tyler Binfet: And that's the work that's really interesting to me around stress reduction on campus, and so I do less sort of maybe rescue work and more.
[00:11:06.980]John-Tyler Binfet: Sustainable sort of let's flourish within within our environment work that's what I strive to do my work is informed by.
[00:11:17.450]John-Tyler Binfet: Positive psychology and, in particular, positive education, a subsidiary of positive psychology that looks at the strengths and attributes that people bring and you know I really want to sort of help folks flourish within their environments.
[00:11:32.990]John-Tyler Binfet: And that's a lot of the work, whether it's kindness, or whether it's the dog intervention work that I do.
[00:11:40.940]John-Tyler Binfet: Some of the principles that guide the art Program.
[00:11:43.970]John-Tyler Binfet: Everything that we do is research driven there really isn't anything that we do that doesn't have some research component to it so it's very whether the practices are all research driven or the programs are connected to data collection.
[00:11:58.910]John-Tyler Binfet: The second one is, we really are very mindful or very intentional about our thinking and reflection on practices, and so we take time to really.
[00:12:06.470]John-Tyler Binfet: Set intentions and we do a lot, probably at the rest of your driving the teams and nuts about sort of talking our way through pre planning studies we do a lot of discussion around planning studies before we execute them and then we do a lot of this here.
[00:12:32.870]He helped me up.
[00:12:45.080]John-Tyler Binfet: we're quick to ask for help and we're really, really quick to offer help, and so we work in a collaborative model in the lab.
[00:12:53.120]John-Tyler Binfet: And so, people are flexible roles and we're really, really quick to help and and collaborate and what really rich work comes out of that I find.
[00:13:03.740]John-Tyler Binfet: The other thing is, we have a shared responsibility to and commitment to safeguard canine welfare and that's distributed across the model.
[00:13:12.020]John-Tyler Binfet: And so it's not uniquely that dog handlers responsibility.
[00:13:16.310]John-Tyler Binfet: We have personnel within the lab who are watching that and then we try as best as possible to give ownership to the clients to make sure that they're watching out for that.
[00:13:26.420]John-Tyler Binfet: And not contributing to canine distress in any way, and so we have posters throughout the lab and whatnot it's sort of not something that we sort of dust off and bring out it's just ever present in all the work that we do so canine welfare is a really big part of what we do.
[00:13:42.500]John-Tyler Binfet: We want to make sure the dogs are.
[00:13:44.210]John-Tyler Binfet: Actually, enjoying the work that they're.
[00:13:45.590]John-Tyler Binfet: Doing with us and they want to be there, so up next is a close up look at the bark program this photo just reminds me I have technology there's folks who work in the back office and.
[00:13:57.260]John-Tyler Binfet: Young research scientist who contribute to barking in particular frayed green who's in the bark office she's a program coordinator and talented photographer.
[00:14:05.450]John-Tyler Binfet: On top we do have hired photographers and bark but free contributes a lot of photography, and this is one of her shots here.
[00:14:12.740]John-Tyler Binfet: And you can see a lot of the photos on our website, the website is bark dot okay ubc.ca and we encourage you to visit that it's a repository of.
[00:14:22.520]John-Tyler Binfet: Information about the bark program and.
[00:14:26.570]John-Tyler Binfet: It announces for students any kind of programming that's coming up on campus or to the campus community and that's really important so that they can see the dates.
[00:14:34.760]John-Tyler Binfet: Especially if there are people, for example with 60 dogs working, you can imagine, there are people who maybe don't want to cross paths with dogs and so it's important that they know the dates the dogs are working.
[00:14:45.650]John-Tyler Binfet: And so the website is a celebration of the work that we do, including some of the media and publications and things like that, but I encourage you it's a bit of a repository about.
[00:14:55.190]John-Tyler Binfet: The work that we do.
[00:14:58.130]John-Tyler Binfet: The programming that we offer primarily we do a drop in session and that's.
[00:15:04.910]John-Tyler Binfet: offered every Friday typically Friday afternoon and that's done strategically sort of to buffer the students into the weekend, especially students who might need a little bit of.
[00:15:15.110]John-Tyler Binfet: a boost to their well being as a entered maybe a rather quieter lonely weekend, and so we do that purposely on Friday nights.
[00:15:22.640]John-Tyler Binfet: are dependent variables that are really stress and homesickness and social isolation too many men to a great extent really we're trying to sort of create conditions where students can thrive.
[00:15:33.710]John-Tyler Binfet: We have on average 4000 students, a year or now in our 10th year who make use of the drop in program and it's a program that is low barrier easy access.
[00:15:42.740]John-Tyler Binfet: Dr pendry and her step her talk earlier today really talked about some of the frustration and long lineups that people can experience.
[00:15:50.600]John-Tyler Binfet: We do have lineups occasionally in different bark programming, but because we're ever present and we don't do programming typically during exams we do it distributed throughout the Semester to chip away at debilitating stress and so.
[00:16:05.030]John-Tyler Binfet: We encourage students right from freshman orientation onward to make use of the bark program as part of their well being rushing.
[00:16:12.710]John-Tyler Binfet: And then the flip side of the drop in sessions here are the bark to go program where we have dog station around the campus on Wednesday afternoons for just a quick kind of fix if if students, would like to drop in and visit therapy dogs.
[00:16:30.890]John-Tyler Binfet: We also have our sponsored by via student exclusive living, which is a housing Center just adjacent to campus and they're generous with their support and happen for years for bark and we run a program in one of their buildings there.
[00:16:43.130]John-Tyler Binfet: i'll tell you today and Jeff alluded to this earlier in about a program called building confidence to canines and.
[00:16:50.450]John-Tyler Binfet: working with children and an after school program or bus to campus i'll tell you about that.
[00:16:54.950]John-Tyler Binfet: For a Green who I mentioned earlier, helps run the police precinct program we're wrapping up our fourth year now of Constable stress reduction and so are proud of that program there so we're on campus and we're in the Community.
[00:17:12.170]John-Tyler Binfet: And you can see here sort of if you look at these photographs what might be asked of a bark dog in terms of context and in terms of client variability.
[00:17:24.260]John-Tyler Binfet: In the course of one week dogs are restricted to working two protocols per week typically at a maximum duration of 90 minutes and often it's under that.
[00:17:34.820]John-Tyler Binfet: But here we would have on campus work again intervention with children, the police work and then just take a minute to look at how intense.
[00:17:43.580]John-Tyler Binfet: This is Craig here who's we're doing a senior visit, and you know you can imagine the messaging to the senior citizen.
[00:17:51.020]John-Tyler Binfet: it's like you, are the only person in the room, you are the most important person to me right now and that feeling that that client would have it's a pretty wonderful work and it's it's it's pretty lovely to be a part of that as a researcher.
[00:18:06.830]John-Tyler Binfet: We use a visual analog scale for any of the work that we do we typically will gather some demographic data data, excuse me.
[00:18:17.330]John-Tyler Binfet: We do duration time in and out of the session and then five point liquored scale.
[00:18:23.240]John-Tyler Binfet: participants will self rate their stress from not at all to very stressed and then at the end, as well, and then we have a open ended bank, so we have 10 years of data and we're just I think this summer that's one of our projects is to.
[00:18:36.110]John-Tyler Binfet: To go through and look at changes over time in any patterns that are if it into the data, but this is sort of our bread and butter in the staple program and we're funded in part by students' for services on campus as one of the well being initiatives to support student.
[00:18:53.300]John-Tyler Binfet: Well, being your stress level is high follow me to the lab if you're a student and wanting to work in hai you know I really recognize how fortunate, I am, this is my lab 30 square meters 900 square feet.
[00:19:07.070]John-Tyler Binfet: And we typically have you know 10 to 12 sometimes upwards of 15 dogs working and protocols here and we do a group socialization model intervention and Dr pendry talked about that and we'll talk a little bit about that.
[00:19:20.180]John-Tyler Binfet: As we go further into some of the studies, today I thought it would share with you.
[00:19:26.450]John-Tyler Binfet: A student video just to kind of illustrate what it actually looks like, and so this is just a student who put together a video of park.
[00:20:46.190]John-Tyler Binfet: So I hope what's emerging as a sort of the sense of community that we strive to build in the bark lab and that's a big part is this idea of social connection.
[00:20:56.750]John-Tyler Binfet: I can only take a little bit of the credit for what happens with marcus's founder and director of the program it's the heavy lifting is done by the dogs.
[00:21:04.970]John-Tyler Binfet: And I know you have therapy dogs coming after today's event so i'm envious for you folks are shared the joy that you'll have, as you get to spend some time with them and we I think sort of my.
[00:21:19.790]John-Tyler Binfet: sort of quiet mission is to debunk the myth that only you know purebred golden retrievers and and labs make great therapy dogs We have lots of rescue months in bark and sort of pride ourselves on this really diverse dog pool of really talented dogs that support.
[00:21:37.580]John-Tyler Binfet: Support well being on campus, although we do have a lot of golden retrievers and and dogs that do really good work i'll give you a history of the bark program next I moved from southern California with this dog here, Francis.
[00:21:50.600]John-Tyler Binfet: And we were part of a program where we worked with adolescents with traumatic and acquired brain injury in.
[00:21:58.340]John-Tyler Binfet: Facility and every Saturday we were just Community volunteers and we would go and I saw firsthand the benefits of doing that sort of work and moved up to Canada to take a faculty position.
[00:22:10.010]John-Tyler Binfet: I would go for coffee with Francis across campus from my building across campus.
[00:22:14.810]John-Tyler Binfet: And I would be besieged by students and the choreography was always the same, it always played out the same way, the students would come, they would largely just ignore me they would lose themselves in Francis.
[00:22:27.200]John-Tyler Binfet: And then invariably they would look up with these tearful dies and they'd say.
[00:22:32.450]John-Tyler Binfet: As much as I miss my parents I miss my dog more.
[00:22:36.080]John-Tyler Binfet: And it was in that moment that I realized Okay, we need to provide access to dogs for students to support their social emotional well being like campus, and so I wrote about an article called pounds and homesickness in 2016 with researcher holly and passport.
[00:22:53.600]John-Tyler Binfet: And we looked at the effects of spending time with therapy dogs on stress and.
[00:22:58.400]John-Tyler Binfet: homesickness and then that got some attention from a web md who listed us as an antidote to homesickness.
[00:23:04.910]John-Tyler Binfet: And then American kennel club kind of wrote about psychology today did a piece, along with Elizabeth hartwig from Texas State University, I wrote about a book with Elizabeth on.
[00:23:14.990]John-Tyler Binfet: The experience of credentialing therapy dogs and we've had good sort of press people magazine has picked up and Martha Stewart living and others have really there's a hunger, to hear about.
[00:23:26.240]John-Tyler Binfet: interactions with with dogs and the effects on well being.
[00:23:30.590]John-Tyler Binfet: We try in the bark program to do things differently, we really try to keep creative and and try, we have a number of engineering students on the bark team and they're always sort of trying different things and here's a student put a gopro camera have a dog station.
[00:23:44.570]John-Tyler Binfet: So here we have a hamper very seasoned panther very seasoned dog, this is me for my dog on an anchor matt we use these anchor mats here to help, we have a student volunteer here and let's just look at a time elapsed version of some of the interactions here.
[00:24:18.320]John-Tyler Binfet: You can see how steady the dog is.
[00:24:21.950]John-Tyler Binfet: It could in fact be asleep, knowing that dog.
[00:24:26.840]John-Tyler Binfet: here's a student reluctant to come in at first and then finds its way into dog as a social capitalist.
[00:24:38.930]John-Tyler Binfet: And then we're just curious about the different interactions that take place and the role of the handler and gluing these interactions and.
[00:24:47.030]John-Tyler Binfet: In particular we're really mindful in the bark lab about students who are on their own and don't have a micro community of support.
[00:24:55.730]John-Tyler Binfet: And I think one of the things we do well in bark is that we glue people to other people, and this leads us to this next.
[00:25:03.590]John-Tyler Binfet: This animation here and as an illustration of the depth or rich sort of human talent, that we have in bark.
[00:25:10.760]John-Tyler Binfet: This is Brittany Kelly Baba who was now a third, who is now a third year medical student, but during her time with bark as an undergrad.
[00:25:18.620]John-Tyler Binfet: She had been with me for two years and casually walked into the office and said, Dr Ben fit I won best junior animator of Canada why don't I do some animation for bark, so this is her.
[00:25:32.240]John-Tyler Binfet: sort of portrayal of social isolation in the world at Barclays in it.
[00:27:00.620]John-Tyler Binfet: So there again the dogs do the heavy lifting but the handler plays a key role and the students in our lab in particular are really, really skilled at sort of.
[00:27:09.320]John-Tyler Binfet: Identifying students who might need a little bit of extra guidance and increasingly we see students like at all, universities, who.
[00:27:16.280]John-Tyler Binfet: Perhaps, with special needs, or exceptional needs perhaps on the spectrum who might find socializing formidable challenge, and so the doctor wonderful social lubricant to sort of glue people together and.
[00:27:31.640]John-Tyler Binfet: we're really mindful of the importance of a micro community of support, as we sort of hit the halfway point of my talk i'm going to switch gears now and tell you about some of the lessons learned.
[00:27:42.890]John-Tyler Binfet: In 10 years of running bark and i'll talk about the things i've learned about therapy dogs and the handlers the importance of duration, Dr Henry talked about that, this morning, a little bit and the importance of touch as well and and will end today with a look at virtual canine comfort.
[00:28:00.110]And having trouble swallowing things because of covert it's a terrible side effects.
[00:28:06.050]John-Tyler Binfet: Okay, what i've learned about therapy dogs I love this photo here here, you have the handler leaning in look at this attentive behavior we have three gentlemen here, probably just come from a class.
[00:28:18.980]John-Tyler Binfet: And they've got their hands on the dog, this is loving, you can just imagine the handler saying you know how's your week been how are you coping these kinds of things and.
[00:28:29.120]John-Tyler Binfet: The one thing we do guarantee after a bark visit is that students will leave feeling better feeling lighter right let's sort of weight on their shoulders and the handlers.
[00:28:37.940]John-Tyler Binfet: play a key role, but the dogs do to when we have these anchor mats that we use as part of our protocols and the dogs are very familiar with them and then.
[00:28:47.060]John-Tyler Binfet: The dogs will settle in the environment, depending where they're working and that usually can take you know five minutes or so before the dog will settle and then the clients are brought in, and and the protocols will begin.
[00:29:00.230]John-Tyler Binfet: We take the screening and selection of the dogs seriously and I really want to sort of shout out to Elizabeth harvick at Texas State University for sort of pushing me to really reflect on.
[00:29:09.740]John-Tyler Binfet: Just what is important when you're assessing dogs for working in this capacity and so we've written about that in terms of.
[00:29:19.850]John-Tyler Binfet: Online screening tools that other agencies are unit using and sort of cleaned as we think about.
[00:29:26.120]John-Tyler Binfet: What makes a good therapy dog and I encourage you to think about this as well, like what are the characteristics carry Rodriguez opened the symposium.
[00:29:34.130]John-Tyler Binfet: Looking at ptsd dogs and the characters those dogs at work well and some of the skills they do, and here we're closing with looking at therapy dogs and some of the talents that they need to bring forward to do the work that they do.
[00:29:47.570]John-Tyler Binfet: Some of the standard things that we look at our reactivity fearfulness activity levels sociability responsiveness to training submits submissiveness problem behaviors.
[00:29:58.010]John-Tyler Binfet: And then, additionally, we have these these holistic criteria if that makes sense we actually assess handler suitability for working with the university students to get a.
[00:30:07.760]John-Tyler Binfet: sense of humor, for example, attachment of the dog to the handler we can't have insecure attachment dogs interested in working with the public meeting new people.
[00:30:17.180]John-Tyler Binfet: dogs ability to settle in a busy environment inter dog compatibility we're not running a dog daycare and we're not a dog park and.
[00:30:24.590]John-Tyler Binfet: The ideal therapy dog is actually in different other dogs and then very human focused very human centric.
[00:30:31.160]John-Tyler Binfet: In different other dogs and then handlers use a proactive versus corrective strategies and really we want the handler reading the dog constantly reading the room.
[00:30:41.960]John-Tyler Binfet: so that they can anticipate what's happening prior to anything going sideways in the bark so we've been doing this again for 10 years.
[00:30:51.680]John-Tyler Binfet: i'm not saying we're all that in a second chips, but we do have a waitlist every single year for dog handler teams trying to get into the bark Program.
[00:31:00.470]John-Tyler Binfet: We are just compiling data now on the number of applicants the success rate of applicants and we'll have a publication coming out at some point.
[00:31:11.510]John-Tyler Binfet: The stations that we have right now that seem to work really well for us, or we have a handler greeting and we asked about motivation to be.
[00:31:19.730]John-Tyler Binfet: A hand There we have basic behavior we then have university students who actually volunteer and come in and we do these mock sort of interaction sessions, and we look at the ability of the handler to introduce the dog or position the dog for accessibility to students.
[00:31:34.160]John-Tyler Binfet: maintain discussion with with students, we have a reaction to stimulus, we have a step away for attachment believe it command interrupt compatibility and then.
[00:31:43.130]John-Tyler Binfet: The one i'll show you next is a reaction to children it's a grand assumption that dogs who work well with adults will work well with children, we also vote actually on the overall stability of the dog handler team.
[00:31:55.610]John-Tyler Binfet: And then, also on the suitability for working in the bark program are they a match.
[00:32:02.090]John-Tyler Binfet: So I have learned and to trust this this we use a democratic model there can every year there's about 25 to 30 students on the team who.
[00:32:11.780]John-Tyler Binfet: And everyone gets a vote on every dog and every hand or who is accepted in the Program.
[00:32:17.360]John-Tyler Binfet: And i've learned to trust that the two times that I did not trust it they went sideways and i've learned my lesson so.
[00:32:23.630]John-Tyler Binfet: We vote on every dog and every handler it's really interesting, we can actually have.
[00:32:28.670]John-Tyler Binfet: difficulties he really high handler interest and the dog is like yeah, this is not for me I don't like this work.
[00:32:34.850]John-Tyler Binfet: And so that team wouldn't advance, and then we can see the flip side, where we have a fantastic dog, but the handler is ill suited to working with university students our clients, and so the team will not advance either so everybody votes they have to have consensus from the entire team.
[00:32:50.810]John-Tyler Binfet: I thought i'd show you station number nine in our assessment protocol and.
[00:32:58.040]John-Tyler Binfet: What we do is station nine is the last one, because we don't want to send any dogs to station nine until we're really sure that they're they're suitable for being around children.
[00:33:08.210]John-Tyler Binfet: And we have children from the Community, who both model and volunteer in parks, we do have young people who are volunteers and bark and so the dog is in a city command, and this is a dog who's seeking to enter bark.
[00:33:21.140]John-Tyler Binfet: And the students, the children are first.
[00:33:24.110]John-Tyler Binfet: astro approach the dog with an open hand open palm quietly and slowly, and then we dial up their energy.
[00:33:31.040]John-Tyler Binfet: And they go back in we dial up their energy and they go back in, and this is the fourth one with lots of excitement and energy, and the reason for that is because we often do school visits and.
[00:33:41.390]John-Tyler Binfet: The, even though we asked teachers to keep the students calm and all that kind of stuff invariably when you bring dogs into a school, you can imagine the kids.
[00:33:49.130]John-Tyler Binfet: can really get very excited so we have to make sure the dogs are studying now what we want is that for the dog to invite the children to the dogs calm level we don't want the dog to match the excitability of the students so watch the dogs non reaction.
[00:34:11.930]John-Tyler Binfet: let's watch that again watch the dogs non reaction.
[00:34:19.970]John-Tyler Binfet: Here, and so we invite the children to or even all clients to sort of match them.
[00:34:26.630]John-Tyler Binfet: The excitement the light of the calm state of the dog, if you will.
[00:34:31.730]John-Tyler Binfet: So this is in the book can assist and interventions and Elizabeth hartwig I thought did a really wonderful job of illustrating.
[00:34:39.890]John-Tyler Binfet: sort of the scope that's asked of therapy dogs that helping dogs in general might have one person as a client predominantly.
[00:34:47.000]John-Tyler Binfet: And then therapy dogs are asked to work in or Friday at different contexts in a variety, with the Friday of different in support for Friday different clients and so that's um.
[00:34:57.140]John-Tyler Binfet: We keep that in mind that a lot is asked if these dogs if you're a tick tock fan you'll know this challenge, and it really sort of to me exemplifies this sort of connection we have it's called kiss your dog challenge and watch this dogs reaction.
[00:35:15.140]John-Tyler Binfet: isn't that just lovely let's watch that again.
[00:35:25.190]John-Tyler Binfet: And dogs have this capacity, and I know when you interact with the dogs today this afternoon that they will just melt your heart and they really do it.
[00:35:32.180]John-Tyler Binfet: there's something about dogs that are very attuned to individuals but also tuned to the environment, watch this dog sort of perception of the environment.
[00:36:03.050]John-Tyler Binfet: And we asked the bark dogs to adapt to a lot of different environments, this was a new learning one for us to be busy police precinct downtown and we have eight dogs who work in protocols there.
[00:36:13.640]John-Tyler Binfet: And they have to get used to all kinds of different smells, for example, recently discharge firearm and all kinds of stuff in uniforms, and so we asked a lot of the dogs don't want i'm going to tell you about and Jeff alluded to this, I think, in earlier introduction.
[00:36:29.120]John-Tyler Binfet: We have the innovative program called building confidence to canines and.
[00:36:33.470]John-Tyler Binfet: All these things that I want to tell you there's a publication, or maybe even to associate with the different things, and so, these are all available on the Faculty web page if you're looking for them here, but this is the young researcher Nicole Harris was a graduate student embark.
[00:36:47.930]John-Tyler Binfet: And we developed a social emotional learning program that's built on castles five pillars of social emotional competencies self awareness self management responsible decision making.
[00:36:59.780]John-Tyler Binfet: relationship skills and social awareness and this is within a Community context so outside of the school and we came up with six different distinct lessons and i'll share with you the first one.
[00:37:11.150]John-Tyler Binfet: Which is our introductions so people initially said well i'm not sure about bringing these having kids and dogs work together and the dogs will hijack the intention of the kids in this drawing here of amber who's.
[00:37:23.660]John-Tyler Binfet: With this photograph of ember working with the kids were drawing on a collective task here they literally would lift her PA.
[00:37:30.890]John-Tyler Binfet: and draw rounded and if she was just part of the team, and it was really wonderful to see that, and you see all the kids here and there, orange shirts and.
[00:37:39.770]John-Tyler Binfet: As part of the program there's a lot that goes into this and Dr pendry alluded to this earlier today.
[00:37:45.290]John-Tyler Binfet: And these interventions and programs that are not easy to pull together there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, a lot of stakeholders and working with children and dogs and you can imagine the ethics, that has to.
[00:37:56.750]John-Tyler Binfet: be done and criminal record background checks for human volunteers and then the parental permission and consent, in a sense from children and all kinds of stuff that goes into this so it's no small feat to pull these sorts of things off.
[00:38:11.150]John-Tyler Binfet: or pedagogical model was we started with the individual child with direct instruction, we then went introduce the dog for skill building and then we did an extension, where the team would go out into the campus community and extended practice so.
[00:38:26.330]John-Tyler Binfet: This is a pre coven when you're allowed to shake hands but students were instructed on.
[00:38:31.070]John-Tyler Binfet: The importance of introductions saying their name shaking hands, making eye contact, they were then assigned a therapy dog, and they would work with the therapy dog and practicing the skills and building their confidence.
[00:38:42.320]John-Tyler Binfet: Excuse me.
[00:38:44.210]John-Tyler Binfet: And then they would go out into the Community.
[00:38:46.910]John-Tyler Binfet: And it's really lovely look at here's a little six year old lexi who's got her therapy dog with her.
[00:38:52.310]John-Tyler Binfet: And then look at the these engineering students, how they just light up at this idea of these you know these young people coming in saying, excuse me, I know you're standing and you're busy and i'd like to introduce myself and like dog.
[00:39:03.680]John-Tyler Binfet: And so, this is sort of this building confidence or canines program and i'll show you just a really quick video of what this looks like in the lab.
[00:39:12.410]John-Tyler Binfet: dogs, maybe humans best friend, but according to research done at ubc okanagan campus dogs can also help with confidence building in children.
[00:39:22.130]John-Tyler Binfet: 22 children between the ages of five and 12 years old, are part of an eight week program designed to enhance social skills.
[00:39:30.830]John-Tyler Binfet: There are a number of skills that we're learning through working in this program and it's called building confidence through canines the dogs really are sort of the catalyst that helped kids feel comfortable taking risks and trying something so.
[00:39:43.580]John-Tyler Binfet: Around leadership and social skills, what we know from our research is that the dogs actually render the client are here, these young children from the Copenhagen boys and girls club.
[00:39:52.820]John-Tyler Binfet: at ease and it allows them to be more open to trying new and different innovative things that they may be wouldn't be open to trying.
[00:40:01.790]Lots of.
[00:40:05.690]Beautiful compliment.
[00:40:08.270]Oh, I see a mixture, we see this receptivity among the children who participate in this to really take a risk and maybe step outside their comfort zone to build skills around interacting with others hi i'm here, this is lexi.
[00:40:26.420]John-Tyler Binfet: You get that sense there that these kids who really shift a lot in their social skills and in their confidence as he interacted build these kids these.
[00:40:36.710]John-Tyler Binfet: Social emotional competencies, I want to share with you next this sort of bidirectional nature, the dog certainly can facilitate.
[00:40:44.420]John-Tyler Binfet: Social emotional development in children and and others, but they also are the receptors to to our emotions and I had an unfortunate experience i'll share with you.
[00:40:56.090]John-Tyler Binfet: Were.
[00:40:57.920]John-Tyler Binfet: About emotional contagion and I learned a lot from that, and you know, I said that we're reflection reflective sort of practitioners and bark and so I learned a lot from reflecting on this experience here and i'll tell you about it.
[00:41:09.350]John-Tyler Binfet: In my social emotional work, I certainly was aware of the work of oberlin shun it radicals who did biomarker research, where they took teacher cortisol levels.
[00:41:18.830]John-Tyler Binfet: and looked at students cortisol levels and actually they say that they could look at the biomarker profile of students and tell which classroom they were in and so.
[00:41:29.720]John-Tyler Binfet: They looked at this idea of emotional contagion that tendency to converge emotionally with those around us within a shared context, so this is really interesting to me, sometimes it's called stress spillover or emotional spillover stress contagion, in particular, is where stressful experiences.
[00:41:49.700]John-Tyler Binfet: Can spill over from one stressed individual to another in a shared social setting so we look back to the Ted talk, I was invited to do a Ted talk and worked with this dog here, Francis and very.
[00:42:02.150]John-Tyler Binfet: Well behaved skilled dog, so we got early access to the data used a chair that was uniquely Francis his chair and i'm not exaggerating when I said say we did this protocol over 100 times with 100% compliance, and this is the way it was supposed to go.
[00:42:37.190]John-Tyler Binfet: bald guy comes out on stage.
[00:42:44.870]John-Tyler Binfet: So i'm not a dog trainer but I, this is, you know, a highly compliant dog very.
[00:42:52.160]John-Tyler Binfet: attentive and then she's cute to say hi to the audience.
[00:43:02.930]John-Tyler Binfet: So, again 100 easily 100 protocols, we ran through 100% compliance for this dog and then Lo and behold the date of the.
[00:43:14.300]John-Tyler Binfet: Of the Ted talk live audience and.
[00:43:18.950]John-Tyler Binfet: gosh i'm sweating just talking about this now i've never seen the YouTube Ted talk of this so unbeknownst test the speaker before us was an Olympic medalist.
[00:43:30.290]John-Tyler Binfet: And this person was talking about, for their Ted talk the glory of winning multiple gold medals and I could hear backstage the metals clanging but really I was listening to a different narrative in my head, while this part celebrity was speaking.
[00:43:49.880]John-Tyler Binfet: And that narrative kind of went something like this.
[00:43:54.200]John-Tyler Binfet: you're in over your head, what are you doing here.
[00:43:58.820]John-Tyler Binfet: You don't belong here and I dialed myself into a real estate backstage and before I knew it they called our names I cute Francis the dog.
[00:44:10.640]John-Tyler Binfet: And she probably took one look at me and left off the stage and I went out on on stage and.
[00:44:19.130]John-Tyler Binfet: was on the red carpet and her chair was empty I glue words together for a living and have a PhD but.
[00:44:25.880]John-Tyler Binfet: There was not much I could do to sort of recover from that all I could see where sort of the audience entire rows of people standing up to let her go by, as she made her way through the auditorium.
[00:44:36.500]John-Tyler Binfet: And then she came back state on stage, maybe halfway through, and you know.
[00:44:41.240]John-Tyler Binfet: It was a really disaster in many ways, and I learned from that this idea of stress down the leech or emotional contagion down the leash and so.
[00:44:52.190]John-Tyler Binfet: True to my ways we met a study to really investigate this, and so, with Haiti silas who's a graduate student the University of Calgary now.
[00:45:00.980]John-Tyler Binfet: We looked at a sample of 754 students 40 handlers 40 therapy dogs and we found that subset of hands, who arrived with elevated stress had therapy dogs with indicators observational indicators that elevated stressed, we use a triangle method of identifying stress and dogs.
[00:45:23.120]John-Tyler Binfet: And so, this was really interesting and we learned a lot from this, the importance of having.
[00:45:28.430]John-Tyler Binfet: handlers who are there for stress reduction to themselves, be in a really strong well being place, and certainly not to sort of.
[00:45:36.830]John-Tyler Binfet: pollute the well being of their dogs, if you will, and to be in optimal sort of states and whether they need to go for a walk prior to coming or rescheduled their their shift.
[00:45:47.690]John-Tyler Binfet: We learned a lot and we incorporate that into our hands on training now.
[00:45:52.160]John-Tyler Binfet: If we believe in emotional contagion in a negative way stress contagion, for example, we must concurrently or concomitantly believe in happiness or what's called joy contagion, and so I thought you're all animal people, we need a good example of that here.
[00:46:14.030]John-Tyler Binfet: Not great now you're lucky because, if I were there i'd have you all get up and start flapping around like East to say hi to each other, and all this kind of stuff so consider yourself safe.
[00:46:25.220]John-Tyler Binfet: Okay, what i've learned about dosage and duration.
[00:46:28.700]John-Tyler Binfet: don't depend really talked about this i'll go fairly quickly mindful of my time.
[00:46:33.080]John-Tyler Binfet: I wrote about in I think in 2017.
[00:46:37.550]John-Tyler Binfet: about an rct looking at the effects of spending time with therapy dogs and a did as part of that article did a survey of previously published our CTS and.
[00:46:48.050]John-Tyler Binfet: Dr Perry talked about this this morning, there is enormous variation in the exposure at the dose the number of sessions, the duration of the intervention that number of participants, the context, all this kind of stuff, not to mention.
[00:47:02.240]John-Tyler Binfet: The variability in the outcome dependent variable measures so, but yet we're all kind of collected collectively claiming that.
[00:47:10.400]John-Tyler Binfet: This this intervention this canine assistant intervention works, and so we need to be really mindful of.
[00:47:18.200]John-Tyler Binfet: Just what is happening, and I think what I appreciate about Dr penrhys talk this morning is.
[00:47:22.970]John-Tyler Binfet: You know her acknowledgement and drawing attention to the handler playing a role contributing and the dogs experience contributing, these are all important things, so we ran a study published in Journal and mental health 2018 I think is a final publication date.
[00:47:38.150]John-Tyler Binfet: This is out of the bar clap and we try to do things differently.
[00:47:41.360]John-Tyler Binfet: And so, instead of making the assumption that is the clinician I know how much of a dosage how much time, you need with the Doc we'd let people decide, and so there's a robust sample size of 1960 students data was collected over three semesters.
[00:47:55.700]John-Tyler Binfet: And so the question and we used our visual analog scale again pre test self ratings and stress post test ratings.
[00:48:03.740]John-Tyler Binfet: And then track a duration and so.
[00:48:08.630]John-Tyler Binfet: We found that it was in aligned with the other work that we had done that, on average, students, remember 1960 students arrive with high ratings and stress typically 4.5 out of five and left with.
[00:48:22.520]John-Tyler Binfet: significant reductions in stress and on average students spend 35 minutes, with a therapy dog when left to select their their dose duration.
[00:48:33.590]John-Tyler Binfet: We know that women stay longer than men, women 36 minutes and on average 32 minutes, and we also know that women on average right with greater stress at pre test and do men and they experienced a greater reduction corresponding reduction in stress.
[00:48:50.990]John-Tyler Binfet: gosh i'm really having trouble swallowing so i'm going to move quickly here what i've learned about touch i'll go through this quickly because.
[00:48:57.080]John-Tyler Binfet: Dr Henry has touched touched on this has addressed this earlier and I love this the I really love this image here's a one of our nursing professors volunteers in the bar program with her dog and.
[00:49:10.400]John-Tyler Binfet: The student, you can just imagine here's the student touching dog and then you can just imagine the narrative the student telling about her week or you know some of the challenges she's faced and the handler attentively listening to this here.
[00:49:24.470]John-Tyler Binfet: This has been published in the in emphasize the importance of client, can I contact, so, in addition to Dr Henry megan Miller at tufts is working on this.
[00:49:33.050]John-Tyler Binfet: topic of touch with that lessons with anxiety and there's a few other researchers who are looking at this, but this publication is available either to the fact that the website or.
[00:49:43.760]John-Tyler Binfet: or through.
[00:49:45.470]John-Tyler Binfet: And through those I think it's available public access, you cannot, and I know you know this i'm you've drank the Kool aid on this already, but you could not substitute.
[00:49:55.100]John-Tyler Binfet: Humans were the dogs are here and get the same aspect of reaction that the dogs will do work that humans can struggle to do right, so we.
[00:50:07.040]John-Tyler Binfet: Always report demographic data on the dogs, especially their it mean experience and the type of dogs and then, as well as the handlers are handlers are pretty consistent over 10 years mean he is about 45 years and they're predominantly women.
[00:50:23.570]John-Tyler Binfet: And they have a great deal of experience, so when we run protocols on campus especially randomized control trials.
[00:50:29.120]John-Tyler Binfet: Are handlers are very, very skilled and the really cool thing with the 60 handlers that we have they're all committed to engaging and research, we do not have to twist any arms when we're when we're running new studies.
[00:50:43.970]John-Tyler Binfet: i'll go fairly quickly here as i'm mindful of the time, but a 284 students, these are some of that we look at both well being an ill being standardized measures we use a typically a visual analytics gift for stress, though.
[00:50:59.720]John-Tyler Binfet: Excuse me.
[00:51:01.970]John-Tyler Binfet: So we randomly assigned students to either a direct hands on touch condition indirect no touch condition, where the dog was they were present with the dog, but no touch and then no dog condition and so true to our ways, everything is measured out.
[00:51:16.340]John-Tyler Binfet: conceptually and then.
[00:51:18.590]John-Tyler Binfet: markers are put on the floor and.
[00:51:21.200]John-Tyler Binfet: Individuals are indicated where they're supposed to sit and all this kind of stuff and we have somebody in the lab who's just monitoring canine distress or stress and we report that, as part of our protocols as well, so the direct touch condition the students had to be.
[00:51:36.260]John-Tyler Binfet: In direct touch with the dogs and then indirect, which is really hard and I think this is what Dr Henry was sort of.
[00:51:42.890]John-Tyler Binfet: explicated earlier with it can be frustrating to be in line and not touch the animals, why do urine so strongly to do that, but we wanted to really parcel out or isolate the effects of touch.
[00:51:53.990]John-Tyler Binfet: i'll go through this quickly here, we found that all conditions contributed to well being but on the cross unanimously on all measures of well being and ill being we saw either significant increases or significant reductions with the direct hands on touch condition.
[00:52:12.170]John-Tyler Binfet: So I think.
[00:52:14.690]John-Tyler Binfet: We might think of you know, these canine interventions visitation programs on campus that's a real fortunate thing if you have one on your campus not all universities do have them they certainly are popular but.
[00:52:27.350]John-Tyler Binfet: If you have a chance to be a part of it, then really and certainly after today when you get the cookies and canines visit make use of it for your well being through direct touch that's key as I sort of wrap up here, I want to tell you about her hot off the press work that we're doing.
[00:52:46.190]John-Tyler Binfet: This is with a researcher Christine turtle Williams from Brock university and her team and it's a partnership between university British Columbia and Brock and it's funded by the Canadian Government.
[00:52:57.770]John-Tyler Binfet: And this is called virtual canine comfort model i'm pleased to report that it's just accepted for publication.
[00:53:04.790]John-Tyler Binfet: Excuse me, and we ran a randomized controlled trial, looking at the effects of spending time virtually with dogs another shout out for eyes as.
[00:53:13.580]John-Tyler Binfet: Dr pendry is the President, you heard on the Chair of Development Committee and there's a whole host of academics and researchers who support this.
[00:53:22.070]John-Tyler Binfet: collaboration of scientists to promote our understanding of.
[00:53:27.710]John-Tyler Binfet: Human animal interactions and the human, animal bond and so again Jeff drew attention to this that open to it until Monday, if you have a.
[00:53:38.000]John-Tyler Binfet: project that might fit the needs here, please check out the website is as.net and along with.
[00:53:44.210]John-Tyler Binfet: Colin del from university of saskatchewan Christine turn have millions from Brock myself and megan muller from test to mercy is the discussing on this, we will be presenting virtually this summer.
[00:53:55.880]John-Tyler Binfet: As part of the Conference, so if you're keen to learn more we really encourage you, and their student discount rates for registration and all that kind of stuff so please reach out if you have any questions on that.
[00:54:06.080]John-Tyler Binfet: So are our aims here really were to just could we develop.
[00:54:10.580]John-Tyler Binfet: A virtual can I comfort model that mirrored as much as possible in person interaction we've been at the in person stuff for a long time, and so we wanted to pivot because of code that, like many of you and see if we could do that, and then we wanted to empirically assess whether we could.
[00:54:27.680]John-Tyler Binfet: see if there are benefits to well being from pre post test visits with.
[00:54:33.500]John-Tyler Binfet: With therapy dogs i'm going to advance us here, so this is when I want to just draw your attention, our handlers are not professional actors or anything like that they're just Community volunteers.
[00:54:42.590]John-Tyler Binfet: And so, here we have Jerry with their dog Google and we'll just start it here, and you get a sense of the role mindfulness plays.
[00:54:50.060]Now, before we get started it's really great to be calm when we meet with the dogs, especially for the first time, so let's just take a deep breath put everything, aside from your whatever you're doing OK ready deep breath and fill your lungs filling up.
[00:55:07.700]hold it.
[00:55:09.980]John-Tyler Binfet: And nice deep breath out so you get this sense and we tried, as much as possible in today's talk with a plug for a culture excited that we're doing using these virtual models.
[00:55:23.000]John-Tyler Binfet: For the visiting student to experience as much as possible in a virtual context when it's like to be.
[00:55:30.350]John-Tyler Binfet: Be in a session So here we for this we randomly assigned 447 undergraduate students to synchronous, which was a zoom session, either with a dog and header or note just a handler.
[00:55:44.780]John-Tyler Binfet: Excuse me, or to a pre recorded YouTube session with a dog and handler or no dog, we have a whole host of both building and well being.
[00:55:55.460]John-Tyler Binfet: measures.
[00:55:57.260]John-Tyler Binfet: of just go through this really quickly.
[00:55:59.900]John-Tyler Binfet: We randomly assigned the handlers were.
[00:56:03.830]John-Tyler Binfet: randomly assigned to condition and also they follow the script so we wanted really a lot of continuity across conditions there.
[00:56:11.630]John-Tyler Binfet: Are hypotheses and i'll run through some some of the findings.
[00:56:15.800]John-Tyler Binfet: That regardless of conditions, remember, there are zoom live zoom conditions with a dog and handler and just a dog just a handler.
[00:56:23.180]John-Tyler Binfet: And then pre recorded YouTube videos and it's the same dog handler in each of these conditions if that makes sense.
[00:56:29.930]John-Tyler Binfet: And that we saw across all conditions we saw well being benefits, so it didn't matter if there was a dog present or not, the hand which seemed to have a positive effect on well being.
[00:56:40.220]John-Tyler Binfet: The dogs did have a significant effect on predict predict post stress reduction and it didn't matter if it was in live zoom or YouTube presence of the dog regardless of that format impacted positively stress or negatively stress reduce stress.
[00:56:56.540]John-Tyler Binfet: The platform did not make a difference.
[00:56:59.690]John-Tyler Binfet: So platform was not a significant indicator and then also there was not an additive interaction effect we thought, maybe live zoom plus a dog would increase, but we did not see that and that's really important to report non significant findings as well, it contributes to the field.
[00:57:19.430]John-Tyler Binfet: Of this again this paper is available or will be out any day now and so i'll let you have a look at that we didn't use, for the first time that Sir complex of emotion, and this is a amalgamated across all four.
[00:57:34.880]John-Tyler Binfet: Conditions, but we asked it pre test select the term that describes how you feel in the moment and.
[00:57:43.430]John-Tyler Binfet: You can see stressed fatigued.
[00:57:48.050]John-Tyler Binfet: Calm these sorts of things, and then you see this reorientation to happy contented relax calm so that's kind of an interesting sort of it's been corroborates our notion of we always guarantee you will feel better after interacting with you know bark dogs.
[00:58:06.800]John-Tyler Binfet: One of the things that we're really trying to do with this project is, can I virtual can and comfort is to reach people are hard to reach, and we want you know when you think of.
[00:58:16.580]John-Tyler Binfet: ED is sort of trying to make things equitable for everybody and that everybody should have access to therapy dogs, and this is our attempt to sort of to promoting wellbeing virtually and to people, or maybe in disenfranchised locations.
[00:58:33.560]John-Tyler Binfet: Some future directions, as we wrap up I love this golden sort of celebrating the moment of set down here the big smile on his face.
[00:58:42.170]John-Tyler Binfet: We have dogs just are piloting working with Canada blood donor services, which is a plasma donation.
[00:58:49.670]John-Tyler Binfet: clinic and they've asked for therapy dogs and essentially the clients who are asking for bark dogs to be there to reduce anxiety and needle phobia so we're just exploring that as a possible research context.
[00:59:05.060]John-Tyler Binfet: One of the Doc a doctoral student, can you who so bright young researcher in bark.
[00:59:11.420]John-Tyler Binfet: her expertise is reading dogs and she for her doctoral research is looking at speaking anxiety and the role of therapy dogs in reduction, reducing public speaking anxiety and so look forward to that research coming out in the not too distant future.
[00:59:27.710]John-Tyler Binfet: As an example of some of the innovative work that we do, and then our virtual can comfort study we actually i'm not in the same zoom.
[00:59:36.500]John-Tyler Binfet: chat I don't think it's you or maybe I can do this i'll try to share this or disseminate this and now, if you go to the park website.
[00:59:44.810]John-Tyler Binfet: And this link is there and we encourage and would appreciate people to take the survey and share it around and it can be just like a steady break, if you will, and you'd be randomly assigned to one of the.
[00:59:55.880]John-Tyler Binfet: Four virtual modules and then we'd ask questions pre and post about your stress perception of stress and it's all confidential anonymous with ethics approval that's the joint bark Brock University of Cambridge weekend and comfort study.
[01:00:12.980]John-Tyler Binfet: I am out of time folks and I want to thank you for your attention and so.
[01:00:19.310]John-Tyler Binfet: When I came in an hour on the nose how's that, and so I guess we'll open up the floor to questions should you have any, thank you for again for having me as part of the symposium.
[01:00:37.130]Jeffrey Stevens: Well, thank you very much, Dr Bennett are you sure you want to do questions, we can also.
[01:00:42.350]John-Tyler Binfet: Do yes i've got i've got here i'm.
[01:00:45.620]Jeffrey Stevens: gonna check I don't want to push you farther than we've already pushed you.
[01:00:50.240]Jeffrey Stevens: So come on up with your questions, please yes.
[01:01:07.700]Jeffrey Stevens: Is that better yes okay Thank you so much john Tyler I was great and you kind of alluded to this a little bit in that photo of the.
[01:01:16.640]Jeffrey Stevens: handler kind of leaning in to ask about the day and I noticed on the evaluation, you also evaluate the handlers on the ability to kind of converse.
[01:01:24.470]Jeffrey Stevens: Is there any sort of informal or formal training you give to the handlers on like things to say and how to kind of do that it's just amazing how much, just like the kind of therapy, that they are giving in those conversations.
[01:01:37.220]John-Tyler Binfet: Right, you know I think it's been addressed previously, we described this as complimentary adjunct sort of position students to seek more formal.
[01:01:47.030]John-Tyler Binfet: Therapeutic services elsewhere, so we don't want the handlers ever to operate in a pseudo therapeutic capacity, but they.
[01:01:53.990]John-Tyler Binfet: Do we give we do training in our orientation around these open ended prompts, and so the role of sharing information to elicit information things like this, so they are quite skilled over time around.
[01:02:07.160]John-Tyler Binfet: Around interacting with students and also being quiet, which is the skill, where they just kind of step back and let the dogs do the work and they might lean in.
[01:02:14.750]John-Tyler Binfet: But we do do a whole orientation, we also do what's called a question persuade refer for suicide self harm, so all of the handlers are.
[01:02:22.940]John-Tyler Binfet: Trained we will get disclosures and self harm the dogs will distribute listed that in clients and so all of the handlers are training, we have a whole protocol in place.
[01:02:31.730]John-Tyler Binfet: Around students who are self identify or disclose around self harm, so, in short, yet the handlers are very, very skilled and and receive training on that.
[01:02:42.500]Jeffrey Stevens: Great Thank you, thank you.
[01:02:48.230]Jeffrey Stevens: We have a question from zoom they want to know how do you address liability issues and having a therapy dog program, for example, in case a dog may bite etc i'd love to see a therapy program here at ul but have heard this as a barrier to that for costs, etc.
[01:03:05.720]John-Tyler Binfet: We are covered under the general liability of the university and providing we are doing work on behalf of the university we're covered.
[01:03:12.830]John-Tyler Binfet: We have a can say in 10 years never had an incident we report every year on all our any sort of breach of safety and that sort of thing.
[01:03:21.770]John-Tyler Binfet: and have never had an incident, I think it is due largely to the heavy heavy screening of dogs coming into the program and the ongoing training I didn't mention, but the dogs once they're.
[01:03:34.520]John-Tyler Binfet: they've gone through the training and the practice and the assessment there put an internship for an entire Semester and.
[01:03:41.210]John-Tyler Binfet: they're really getting a lot of guidance and they do micro doses of as a kind of build up their capacity to work in the program so we haven't faced that but I hear that a lot from universities are fearful around.
[01:03:53.510]John-Tyler Binfet: Do taking this step for it, I can only tell you that I know our university is really grateful for our program because we hear two things.
[01:04:02.840]John-Tyler Binfet: From students and from parents actually we hear students who say we're at tier one university, and so we hear them say they got into university Toronto Miguel all the top schools, but they chose ubc because of the dog Program.
[01:04:17.180]John-Tyler Binfet: And then we also on the flip side here kids will say I didn't drop out of you at ubc because of the dog program and so you know I know.
[01:04:27.290]John-Tyler Binfet: anecdotally that we've sort of earned our spot on campus and we you know it's really interesting for me as a researcher will have kids come in, this is my first time here.
[01:04:36.170]John-Tyler Binfet: I say, well, where are you from and they'll say Istanbul, and I say, well, where did you hear about the dark room and they said well in my high school.
[01:04:42.230]John-Tyler Binfet: And so they do recruitment around the program and so it's really embedded within the fabric of the university and so it's well supported and the liability insurance that companies are undergirds the work that we do is there for us as well, but again we've never had an incident.
[01:05:02.750]Jeffrey Stevens: actually have a follow up question to that which just brought to mind when, so thank you so much for explaining that.
[01:05:08.750]Jeffrey Stevens: And that is how have you ever been able to actually look at enrollment figures like because universities really keep those right and so would it be possible to go back grab those from years prior to starting and then looking at retention rates and seeing if there may be controlling.
[01:05:26.510]John-Tyler Binfet: yeah I like your thinking here and it's sort of the one thing we've not addressed is, we have not done.
[01:05:32.540]John-Tyler Binfet: A study actually looking at retention across four years, and the problem is, we can't find a control group of students who have no access to the dogs.
[01:05:40.370]John-Tyler Binfet: Because our dogs are everywhere and so invariably did find them in a lecture or they would.
[01:05:45.140]John-Tyler Binfet: run across them, and so we haven't been able to really track and it's tough to recruit students who say, I will not have pledged to have no contact with bugs for four years, so.
[01:05:54.980]John-Tyler Binfet: I don't know I haven't done that sort of archival looking backwards analyses that you know to what extent we've done that, but certainly anecdotally, we know that we've i'd like to say, we positively impacted the climate in enrollment and retention.
[01:06:16.910]Jeffrey Stevens: All right, I have a question which is expectancy effects right so you're kind of you're starting off saying you're guaranteed to get that good.
[01:06:28.280]Jeffrey Stevens: Coming out of this.
[01:06:29.330]Jeffrey Stevens: So yeah interpret.
[01:06:30.800]Jeffrey Stevens: Changes in that when you you kind of set set that up.
[01:06:34.640]John-Tyler Binfet: yeah well we don't I mean we know that's not my selling features early oh when Jeff we're running protocols there's like a whole script to fall and all that kind of stuff what we're doing intervention studies, but.
[01:06:47.120]John-Tyler Binfet: The the drop in program is a bit more relaxed around that kind of stuff but yes, and you have people who.
[01:06:54.800]John-Tyler Binfet: are seeking this and we have lots of repeat users who come and and so there's a lot of maybe a bit about there's some pollution there, I would say in terms of.
[01:07:04.550]John-Tyler Binfet: confounding issues but expectancy effects are ladies people.
[01:07:08.210]John-Tyler Binfet: But you know we get to the like the boyfriends who are dragged along right and then it's the boyfriends who don't want to leave the lab they're like you know the baby drank the Kool aid to as a kind of experience that.
[01:07:20.240]John-Tyler Binfet: So we do have reluctant folks come through we it's kind of lovely we do see families come through faculty members with children will come through the lab and.
[01:07:29.330]John-Tyler Binfet: And so that's been really rewarding to see that as part of the Community as well.
[01:07:36.320]Jeffrey Stevens: Excellent well, thank you very much.
[01:07:38.330]John-Tyler Binfet: Thank you.
[01:07:39.200]John-Tyler Binfet: I really sincerely sincerely appreciate the invitation Jeff, thank you for including me and and I wish you a wonderful last coffee break session therapy dogs, thank you.
[01:07:48.470]Jeffrey Stevens: Thank you very much.
[01:07:56.090]Jeffrey Stevens: Well, I don't know about you all, but I had a pretty good time these last three days it's been a real pleasure, hopefully, we all learn something new, maybe started to build some new bridges and integrate some new kind of information connections between dog cognition and human, animal interaction.
[01:08:12.680]Jeffrey Stevens: So, of course, I really.
[01:08:15.710]Jeffrey Stevens: I really want to thank the.
[01:08:16.760]Jeffrey Stevens: Speakers this was absolutely amazing we had fantastic talk, so please join me in thanking all the speakers that we've had for the last last three days, thank you all.
[01:08:30.980]Jeffrey Stevens: As I mentioned before, that we recorded hopefully properly all of the talks, and so the plan will be to have those available.
[01:08:39.890]Jeffrey Stevens: there'll be a link added probably to the symposium website at some point, that will not be this weekend I can promise you that.
[01:08:45.860]Jeffrey Stevens: won't happen this weekend, but sometime next week we'll get to try to get those get those posted so you can just go back and check the main symposium website will have a link on the on the on the homepage there.
[01:08:56.330]Jeffrey Stevens: So please, please check that out, especially if you missed some talks and wanted to see some new things CC some things you missed.
[01:09:02.330]Jeffrey Stevens: Another thing is for all of these symposia that we do every year we create an edited volume out of that and we'll be doing that so so my job is just about over, and now the hard work.
[01:09:12.140]Jeffrey Stevens: goes to the speakers who will be writing book chapters and so we'll come up with the edited volume with that and.
[01:09:18.260]Jeffrey Stevens: Probably sometime next year too quick reminders first of all, as we heard multiple times, please join us now as soon as we're done here when we wrap up for cookies and canines.
[01:09:29.420]Jeffrey Stevens: In the Plaza just north of the Union, assuming the dogs haven't been blown away and we have to come inside with what we're inside okay nevermind we're inside so we're not going to be a.
[01:09:40.520]Jeffrey Stevens: Outside we're going to be excited so it's just right across the hall so there's no reason not to just go join us right over there soon as we're.
[01:09:46.070]Jeffrey Stevens: As soon as we're done and as part of that, as I mentioned a few times we're collecting pet food supplies things like that, for the pet pantry So hopefully if you brought some things for that, please come come drop those off lastly.
[01:09:59.660]Jeffrey Stevens: As I alluded to, at the very beginning of this symposium.
[01:10:03.530]Jeffrey Stevens: It takes a lot of work to put something like this together and i'm immensely grateful for to Pam wall fogle for spending all of the time that she did and effort that she did putting this together, so please help me Bank be grateful for Pam for all of her for hard work.
[01:10:23.840]Jeffrey Stevens: You don't get to just go hide off in the corner, we have a little a small small token of our appreciation for you what's that.
[01:10:32.120]Jeffrey Stevens: A puppy okay.
[01:10:34.310]Jeffrey Stevens: We didn't get you a puppy.
[01:10:38.180]Jeffrey Stevens: um, but I would also like to thank people that you might not see around as much, but did an immense amount of job on this amount of work as well, which is London Wolf and Jessica Barela for all of your help, as well, thank you two.
[01:10:52.250]Jeffrey Stevens: Are for all of your help, it was it was really wonderful it really that's it takes it takes a whole team of folks to put this together, and I very much appreciate it.
[01:11:01.340]Jeffrey Stevens: If you if you see the names London wolf or Jessica Barela coming across an application in your in your field snap them up they're great they're great so.
[01:11:13.820]Jeffrey Stevens: Of course, I also want to thank the audience, thank you all for your for for being here and listening to this talk all of these talks, and I hope you enjoyed it have come join us now pet some dogs and have a great weekend, thank you, everybody.

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animal-assisted intervention
canine
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human-animal interaction
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Dogs on campus: Lessons learned from 10 years overseeing canine-assisted interventions and programming

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