With a wag of their tails, dogs — and other furry creatures — can help humans relieve the anxiety associated with therapy and other medical appointments
On a typical visit to the New Opportunities for Wellness (NOW) behavioral health clinic, you might be greeted in the lobby by the likes of Lady AnnaBella, a Shih Tzu, and her owner, Sandra Olsaver.
The mission of the dozens of teams of volunteers from PAWS (pets are wonderful support) for Service and from Therapy Animals of San Antonio that routinely visit the clinic is to help alleviate the anxiety patients may have while waiting for their therapy appointments.
Another benefit of Healing Hounds — the official name of the program — is that the mere presence of these four-legged ambassadors can create a more productive therapy session by helping patients relax, according to clinic director Megan Fredrick, MA, LPC-S.
The NOW clinic, funded by University Health through the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council, is a collaboration with The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and is open to any adult Bexar County resident in need of behavioral health treatment.
Healing Hounds is the brainchild of Meredith Stensland, PhD, LMSW, a health science center assistant professor of research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The program is an offshoot of Dialysis Doggos, a research study conducted by Stensland in which dogs were used to encourage dialysis patients to attend grueling appointments and help improve symptoms of pain and depression.
“The study tested the therapeutic value of having therapy dogs visit an outpatient clinic,” Stensland said. “I got with Megan and thought, ‘Why can’t we try and implement it here at our outpatient psychiatry clinic?’”
For Fredrick, incorporating the Healing Hounds program at the NOW clinic just made sense.
“We started during the pandemic in 2020 to get people rapid access to behavioral health care — the care they need, when they need it,” said Fredrick. The global pandemic and its resulting isolation amplified the internal struggles and the self-doubt and self-judgment many people were experiencing, she added.
“When it comes to behavioral health, there is a lot of stigma, still,” said Stensland. “Having a smiling, friendly presence in the waiting room can make a really big difference.”
Cats and bunnies, too
Linda Porter-Wenzlaff, PhD, LPC-S, NCC, MSN, RN, a former health science center faculty member and now a director for Therapy Animals of San Antonio, said their volunteers go wherever invited and visit schools, libraries, hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation clinics.
“At a rehab center, a patient can walk a dog on a leash with their owner and the patient may pay more attention to the dog and walk further without a sense of discomfort or pain because the patient is engaging with the dog,” said Porter-Wenzlaff.
She’s been told by nursing home residents that their only physical contact is for medical purposes such as a blood pressure check or medication administration.
“But when the animal comes in, they hop in the bed with the resident and snuggle,” she said. “They tell me, ‘It’s the only time I have that wonderful positive touch.’”
She said the animal teams are comprised of not only dogs, but also rabbits and cats. Any domestic animal is eligible to participate in the program, and no one breed is more suited as a therapy animal over another. However, every animal and their owner go through a rigorous screening process every two years to ensure ongoing suitability, Porter-Wenzlaff said.
“We made a decision very early we were going to follow national standards and best practices,” she said. “It’s a matter of safety and ethics for all involved.”
Fit for duty
Training animals in obedience is the responsibility of the owner, as is maintaining regular veterinary checks and grooming. When owners believe their animal is ready, they go through the evaluation. Part of that involves testing a dog’s basic obedience skills and ability to remain calm while being bumped and having its tail pulled. They likewise are observed while the organization’s staff make noise and use equipment typically encountered in the clinic, nursing home or school setting. The relationship between the dog and owner is also evaluated.
“The animal has to look to the owner for direction and support. The owner has to know their animal well enough to anticipate what they need,” said Porter-Wenzlaff.
When the dog and owner are certified, they are encouraged to visit facilities near their home.
“It works best if they go with a population they want to be with,” Porter-Wenzlaff said. “We have more requests than we can fill, so we have a long list of places and facilities to choose from.”
Mood booster
Porter-Wenzlaff’s experience as a therapy dog owner is nothing new to the retired nurse. While working as a young nurse in the 1970s with pediatric cancer patients, she noticed the children missed their animals despite visits from their families. Porter-Wenzlaff’s solution was to sneak a dog into the hospital.
“I brought the dog up through the back stairway, ran into the patient’s room, closed the door and thought I made it,” she said. “Within 15 minutes, there were maybe 20 people visiting the dog. I realized how much the animal visit impacted the patient and the physicians, residents and nursing staff.”
Later in her nursing career, as a professor at UT Health San Antonio’s School of Nursing and as a practicing psychotherapist, Porter-Wenzlaff continued to use animals as a therapy to help patients and to teach students the value of therapy animals.
“When the students of the graduate elective course I taught at the nursing school returned from their required observations, I would tell them, ‘Now you see why we do this work.’ The impact is more than you would think.”
If you own a registered therapy dog and are interested in making visits to the clinic, call 210-450-7222, or email nowclinic@uthscsa.edu.
Under one woof
The New Opportunities for Wellness (NOW) clinic, the Transitional Care Clinic (TCC) and all child, adolescent and adult psychiatry services of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio are now co-located at the UT Health San Antonio Behavioral Health and Wellness Center. 
“The idea was to have all the services in one place so we can work together as faculty and clinicians so that individuals get the behavioral health needs for them and their family members met all in one place, without fragmentation or big gaps in care,” said Megan Fredrick, MA, LPC-S, director of the NOW clinic.
The conditions of adult and adolescent patients using the university’s services range from depression to isolation, said Fredrick. Adult stressors may include the economy, family situations, grief and loss, as well as serious mental health conditions. Adolescents face similar stressors with the added burden of fitting into their social groups and the impact of social media or school pressures.
“The pressure of society is harsher on kids than it used to be,” noted Fredrick. While in general, psychiatry may have historically experienced longer wait times, the NOW clinic — and the new NOW for Adolescents clinic — will find availability for patients within the week, said Fredrick.
With the additional services in one location, the Healing Hounds program has likewise expanded to include visits to all patients in the center. Between January 2023 and August 2024, hounds and their handlers completed more than 2,700 visits with patients or their family members.
How hounds help
Ample research points to the ways that animals help us, including stress reduction, social support, and even changes in hormones that regulate mood and pain, said Meredith Stensland, PhD, LMSW, a UT Health San Antonio assistant professor of research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Animal therapy is not a new idea. According to the Alliance for Therapy Dogs, the ancient Greeks used horses to lift the mood of sick patients. In the 1940s, sick and injured veterans took care of farm animals to ease war-related trauma. Perhaps the first formal use of animals as part of therapy began in the 1960s when Boris Levinson, PhD, a New York City clinical psychologist, discovered that his sessions with children were significantly more productive when his dog, Jingles, was present. With the publication of his book Pet-Oriented Child Psychotherapy, Levinson introduced many more practitioners to the concept of the dog as a co-therapist.