A Dog's Love Leads to Healing Ministry

Excerpt from an article written by Mike Cade for The Oregonian, August 10, 2006.

Can "man's best friend" help mankind find a path to God?

Lake Oswego resident Jerilyn Felton thinks so. She contends that dogs have many God-like characteristics, making them perfectly suited to help individuals connect to the divine.

"They give you unconditional love," says Felton, director of religious education at St. Cyril Catholic Church in Wilsonville. "They are accepting of you regardless of what you look like, how (old) you are. . . . They're very giving beings."

The benevolence of dogs and their ability to "read a person on a spiritual level" became obvious to Felton in the early 1990s, when she watched a television documentary in which women prisoners established bonds with the animals.

Felton was moved by the limitlessness of the dogs' non-judgmental nature. "The dog doesn't know any different if you're an ax murderer."

At that point, the seed was planted for Felton's "canine-assisted ministry." She laid out a model in a thesis at Marylhurst University. The thesis was eventually presented to the Delta Society, a Bellevue, Wash., nonprofit that seeks to improve human health through interaction with service and therapy animals.

Although Felton's aspirations for canine-assisted ministry take on a spiritual quality, her day-to-day approach is methodical and scientific.

She says that canine-assisted ministry lies between two modes of healing. The first is animal-assisted activity, such as nursing home visits. The second is animal-assisted therapy, such as when stroke victims brush a dog's fur to recover arm strength.

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