Joining the COHI ministry was for us, so to speak, the tail that wagged the dog. We had recently adopted 2 tiny, older fur babies with the intention of training them to therapy and about a year after that, we heard about COHI and decided that it might be a match made in Heaven, so to speak … therapy dogs who cannot talk, involved in a ministry that emphasizes “listening with the ear of your heart.”
And so we entered chaplain training which, as Brother Michael quipped, was simply ‘learning how to show up and shut up.” Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, the show up part is but the shut-up angle takes a lot of training! Humans are not naturally the shut-up type. We love to talk, we love to share, and sometimes we even love to ‘one up’ those to whom we are ministering, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of The Ear of Your Heart thing.
It’s so easy to fall into that trap … sometimes we think we’re just helping our fellow pilgrims by attempting to make their issues seem less stressful by contrasting them with more dramatic examples we’ve heard or experienced. That alone would guarantee that COHI chaplain would not be asked to return. Our pilgrim clients, like us, want to have their issues validated, appreciated, understood and above all, simply….heard. And then again, sometimes we the chaplains get sucked in and simply cannot help but share triggered experiences that we may never have quite resolved, ourselves. That would be another no - no.
Doing a therapy dog ministry cured both of those problems because our two tiny elderly pups stepped up and took the ministry out of our hands and into their own paws, to the extent that I eventually published a book about it entitled “Paw Prints On My Soul.”
We already knew the healing effect therapy dogs had on nursing home and senior center folks, but once we were certified as chaplains, more doors were open to us and to our furry assistants and they pretty much took over the ministry. We were already making therapy visits, as per our and their certification as therapy dogs and handlers. This did make the entire process much easier. We had in essence already performed a 6th month (at least) internship equivalent, so we literally hit the ground running. And that was preceded by an extended dog training/handling course to get the dogs where they needed to be to wear their little red therapy dog jackets and make official visits. That is indeed ‘a whole ‘nother story.!’
The dogs were already certified and visiting and stimulating our elderly and infirm clients, but armed with our new chaplain knowledge and training in listening, we no longer prattled on and on about the dogs, their training or their issues (they had handicaps that did indeed make them more ‘user-friendly). We simply showed up, shut up and let the dogs work their magic.
Of course, we always asked if people wanted a dog-visit. We knew there were folks with fears and/or allergies - but once they nodded, we placed a dog in a lap and the crooning, singsong recitations and often whispered telling of secrets began and we were simply those humans on the other end of the leash….for a while, anyway.
Once the dogs’ cute cuddliness began to break down long-erected barriers, the words began to bubble up from the depths, trickle into sentences and flow more towards us as chaplains and we discovered listening wasn’t that hard…folks had a LOT to say. It didn’t always make a lot of sense, but they had stifled it for a long time; busy caregivers didn’t have the time to listen - then hear it again and again, dementia shorted out wiring in their brains and fried the facts beyond recognition and sometimes what they had to share was too hard to hear…even for them.
The dogs remedied all that. All we had to do was acknowledge that we heard what was being shared, to honor the words and pray with the sharer.
