Radio Interview: Pet Therapy, Depression, Anxiety

Liz Morrison’s Radio Interview

On Sunday, November 22 2015, I did an interview with Sande Janagold on WORT Community radio. This was also a call-in show and there was some nice participation. The topic was pet therapy and how it relates to depression and anxiety in women and children.

Sande is a great interviewer and asked me all sorts of questions about Dogs on Call and Pet Partners. More importantly, she asked how and why pet therapy works to ease pain, stress, anxiety and depression. We talked mostly about dogs and their ability to give unconditional love and acceptance. I explained that we now know that simply petting a dog for 15 minutes helps to release the “good” hormones: seratonin, prolactin, and oxytocin. And petting a dog also helps to lower cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

I talked about the many places Dogs on Call visits throughout our communities. When the program DOC has in an elementary school and a middle school in Madison was mentioned, a woman called in to say that her son is one of the students who gets to visit with the dogs in the elementary school program. This mom was very impressed with the progress her son has made since spending time petting and reading to the dogs. Mom said her son is now engaging in his classes and looks forward to going to school. He has encountered four dogs in this program and has all of their trading cards. Mom said he is very proud of these cards and has them on display in his room. It was a very heartwarming call and I thanked this mother for calling in to tell her son’s story with the dogs.

Everyone agreed though that this was just a start in letting the public know about pet therapy. Also that pet therapy works for big people and little people alike, no matter what age, sex, color of one’s skin, socioeconomic background or educational status. Our pets simply don’t care how tall you are or how much money you have in your pocket. The only thing that matters to them is being able to spend time with a human, being loved, and loved some more.

Sande Janagold invited Dogs on Call back to WORT whenever our organization has something we want to talk to the public about. I found this time spent at WORT to be a very positive and heart – warming experience. To catch more of Sande’s shows, listen in on Sunday mornings or visit the archives: http://wort-fm.org/