by Meg Olmert, Science Advisor for The Comfort Dog Project
In 2019, I visited The BIG FIX program of Northern Uganda to learn about its amazing animal-assisted therapy intervention being offered to the survivors of a brutal 20-year-long civil war. The BIG FIX operates the only veterinary hospital in all of Northern Uganda and the only canine-assisted trauma therapy in Africa.
Animal-assisted trauma therapy is my field of research, but The Comfort Dog Project was stretching the limits of my imagination. Firstly, the degree of trauma is unthinkable. Seventy percent of the war survivors—approximately 1 million people—suffer from post-traumatic stress. The idea that bonding with a dog could heal such deep man-made wounds was something I needed to see for myself. And then there’s the complicating factor that, while everyone has dogs, they’ve never seen them as friends. Dogs protect the home and help with the hunt. They don’t rate fresh water, food, shelter. They must get by any way they can. Millions of dogs live brutal, short lives and too many of them contract rabies and deliver fatal attacks. It’s literally a vicious cycle.
So it’s no wonder people fear and avoid dogs—or worse. And yet, The Comfort Dog Project has cut through this dog-phobic reflex to show people how to communicate and bond with their dogs. Measures of traumatic stress taken before and after the 20-weeks of dog-bonding lessons, show that the guardians come away not just with a surprising new best friend, but that this friendship provides significant relief from their traumatic suffering. These therapeutic effects are amazing and essential in a region with one mental health care worker per million.
Thanks to the healing power of The Comfort Dog Project, the guardians, once frozen by trauma, have become BIG FIX public health providers bringing lifesaving animal welfare and rabies awareness lessons to thousands of school kids and vaccinating over 90,000 dogs against rabies. Rabies is far more than a public health issue in Uganda—everyone knows someone who has died this awful death. Sadly, it’s usually kids who are bitten when walking to and from school.
For the first 65 years of my life, my sole “exposure” to rabies came from the 1957 movie Old Yeller. That story broke my 5-year-old heart. I vowed I would always vaccinate my pets to save them from rabies. Clearly, I didn't know the half of it. As I joined my Ugandan colleagues at a rural rabies clinic, I found myself surrounded by hundreds of people who were bringing their dogs to be vaccinated so their dogs wouldn’t kill them. Oh. The shock of Old Yeller launched me in the direction of The BIG FIX where we are actually rewriting its far more haunting ending--one rabies shot at a time.
As horrible, real, and avoidable as death by rabies is, loneliness and trauma are even more deadly. The BIG FIX and our Comfort Dog Project offer the only protection from both. This is the sustainable power of a One Health vision. Healthy dogs make health people, make healthy dogs… Please join us please in manifesting this evolutionary truth: We are social mammals who have always been stronger, safer, and saner together.
Animal-assisted trauma therapy is my field of research, but The Comfort Dog Project was stretching the limits of my imagination. Firstly, the degree of trauma is unthinkable. Seventy percent of the war survivors—approximately 1 million people—suffer from post-traumatic stress. The idea that bonding with a dog could heal such deep man-made wounds was something I needed to see for myself. And then there’s the complicating factor that, while everyone has dogs, they’ve never seen them as friends. Dogs protect the home and help with the hunt. They don’t rate fresh water, food, shelter. They must get by any way they can. Millions of dogs live brutal, short lives and too many of them contract rabies and deliver fatal attacks. It’s literally a vicious cycle.
So it’s no wonder people fear and avoid dogs—or worse. And yet, The Comfort Dog Project has cut through this dog-phobic reflex to show people how to communicate and bond with their dogs. Measures of traumatic stress taken before and after the 20-weeks of dog-bonding lessons, show that the guardians come away not just with a surprising new best friend, but that this friendship provides significant relief from their traumatic suffering. These therapeutic effects are amazing and essential in a region with one mental health care worker per million.
Thanks to the healing power of The Comfort Dog Project, the guardians, once frozen by trauma, have become BIG FIX public health providers bringing lifesaving animal welfare and rabies awareness lessons to thousands of school kids and vaccinating over 90,000 dogs against rabies. Rabies is far more than a public health issue in Uganda—everyone knows someone who has died this awful death. Sadly, it’s usually kids who are bitten when walking to and from school.
For the first 65 years of my life, my sole “exposure” to rabies came from the 1957 movie Old Yeller. That story broke my 5-year-old heart. I vowed I would always vaccinate my pets to save them from rabies. Clearly, I didn't know the half of it. As I joined my Ugandan colleagues at a rural rabies clinic, I found myself surrounded by hundreds of people who were bringing their dogs to be vaccinated so their dogs wouldn’t kill them. Oh. The shock of Old Yeller launched me in the direction of The BIG FIX where we are actually rewriting its far more haunting ending--one rabies shot at a time.
As horrible, real, and avoidable as death by rabies is, loneliness and trauma are even more deadly. The BIG FIX and our Comfort Dog Project offer the only protection from both. This is the sustainable power of a One Health vision. Healthy dogs make health people, make healthy dogs… Please join us please in manifesting this evolutionary truth: We are social mammals who have always been stronger, safer, and saner together.