My Therapy Dogs-A Touch of Love

Therapy dogs are used for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) all the time and even though my dogs aren't certified they've proven they are my own personal therapy dogs in my healing.  My doctor told me to find a way to make them my therapy dogs to bring me out of my PTSD, I didn't know how.  I look up ways, but I didn't know how to do it, because when you're in a flashback you don't have the capacity to give a cue or a signal.  But my dogs are so amazing and know me so well, they already knew how to connect me back to the present.  This is one of many examples.

 I'm here Mom.

She was stuck.  Far into the recesses of her mind.  Her face had shifted to a blank, empty stare, frozen in time.  Hallow eyes haunted her with the wreckage of the unthinkable of what had been done to her.  Her husband continued to talk to her aware of the shift, but not knowing how to bring her back from the terrible tragedy that still vexed her to this day.  She was mute.  She was caught in a vortex from which she couldn't escape.

She was numb from head to toe and hopeless in being an assistance to her husband and the small demolition job he was taking on.   Boxes upon boxes full of broken tile and drywall lay throughout house as her husband was just about finished.

But all she could see was the destruction of her life.  Broken.  Shattered.  And scattered.

Unable to communicate she went through the motions best she could to help him, but her state of mind never changed.  The mental doom was unstoppable.

Finally they headed for home.  Still spellbound she walked like a ghost through the greetings of the four Back Dogs and made her way to the kitchen.

She leaned against the counter.  Not knowing for how long before she felt Chance press against her leg and slide his head under her hand.  He stood there as he gently nudge her and the contact they had made.  Instinctively her fingertips slowly played Chance's head like a piano and she felt her fingertips.  Still unaware, she began to massage his head until her fingers connected with her palm.  The beat of life crescendo as consciousness began to burst up her arm until it reached her heart and head.  And like a shower to caked on mud she mentally shook her head out her comatose-like state and phased into the present.  She felt her heartbeat, her breath and Chance's soft fur beneath her hand.  She reached down to give him a big hug while he kissed her face.

  Hang On Mom!!

Chance is here.  Which meant she was here.  Relief rush through her like an open window of fresh air.

She had dissociated.  A survival technique from her childhood that kept her alive, that when triggered could still set off to this day.  Dogs had been the only being that could bring her back to the present.  Chance had saved her several times over the years.  For he too knows what it is like to be hurt and he had a gift for it.

Today, it was Chance, my personal therapy dog that broke the spell.