The Four Stages of Becoming an Effective Animal-Assisted Therapist (and Why Stage Two Is the Hardest)
I’ll be honest. I always panic a little when I’m asked by graduate students for permission to come observe animal-assisted speech therapy in action at my office.
I love sharing what I do. And their excitement to enter this field and make a difference is contagious. But…
I always think, what if my therapy dog and I don’t do anything that special on the day we’re being shadowed? What if the student leaves thinking, “What’s the point?” How do I engineer a really “magical moment” to show off the power of the human-animal bond?
My fourth speech therapy dog, Sky, doing what she does best: entertain!
By the time I started working with her I was well into stage 3, concious competence, and providing animal-assisted speech therapy felt much easier than when I first started.
The reality is, there are sessions when I am blown away by how much my therapy dog brings to a session. Calming a child that is really struggling with self-regulation. Eliciting giggles from an otherwise shy and withdrawn pre-teen. Motivating mass repetitions of a target word to perform a trick over and over to the delight of everyone.
But more often than not, my therapy dog and I are supporting my clients in subtler, but no less important, ways.
· It’s the smile when a teen is greeted at office door despite having already endured a long day of social overwhelm at school.
· It’s the ease with which a mercurial preschooler follows my dog to the therapy room.
· It’s the audible deep breath a mom takes while petting my dog after a day of special-needs parenting.
· It’s the pride I feel watching my dog in these interactions that make each work day a joy.
Usually, these moments feel natural and easy, as if I’m not really doing anything special.
I’ve realized, however, that the first months and years of struggle when I started partnering with my speech therapy dogs—those months and years where every moment felt difficult and trying—have led to this point where I can subconsciously make decisions on the fly to keep a session running smoothly, safely, and effectively.
I have finally (finally!) reached the level of “unconscious competence” in psychology’s levels of competency model.
The only problem is, when you’re at that level it’s easy to overlook how much thought is actually happening in the background of your brain and leave you feeling as if you’re not actually working very hard.
So now when a graduate student calls I feel comfortable sharing with them not only what they might see my dog and I do, but also what they might not see.
· they might not see the frequency of melt-downs and resistance of my kids with higher self-regulation needs
· they might not see the disinterest and avoidance of therapy tasks of my kids who’ve needed years of therapy
· they might not see the overwhelm on the caregivers’ faces as they fit in one more commitment to their busy week…
And they might not see me doing a lot of complex, attention-getting stuff to make animal-assisted therapy look fancy.
So let’s take a closer look at what my experience has been like progressing through the four levels of competency so you can better recognize why some times it feels as if this therapy niche is so challenging while other times you might feel like you’re not doing anything special…
Stages One and Two, when you realize handling a therapy dog is harder than it looks
Usually credited to Noel Burch of Gordon Training International, who began teaching the theory in the 1970’s, the Levels of Competency Model proposes that learners of a complex skill will progress through four levels of development if they desire mastery.
I first discovered this model years ago while improving my horsemanship, specifically trying to sit the trot. If you’ve ever ridden a horse, you’ll know the trot can be very bouncy, yet advanced riders stay glued to their horse’s back gracefully. I was at a stage where I cognitively understood my trainer’s suggestions but my body wouldn’t cooperate for more than a few seconds at a time and I was more frustrated than when I just couldn’t do it at all. Why couldn’t I just do it all the time…after all, I could do it in short spurts!
I was at the second stage of the model , conscious incompetence. This was, nonetheless, improvement from the first stage in which I didn’t even know what to do or what I was missing, unconscious incompetence.
So what’s the difference? In both stages I was equally bad at the skill, yet the second stage suggests a huge improvement because I was at least aware of how bad I was.
Sound miserable? It is! The transition between these two stages can feel unbearable and you’re likely left incredibly self-conscious. It’s where you’re most likely to give up, assuming that everyone but you seems to be able to perform this skill naturally while your brain (or body, for more athletic endeavors) just can’t figure it out.
But there’s good news! You can’t improve on a skill you don’t realize is difficult. So owning the stage of conscious incompetence and pushing through to add knowledge and opportunities to pursue the next stage of competence is key.
Experiencing not only highlights but also heartbreaks, such as retiring Bodhi from animal-assisted speech therapy work when he wasn’t thriving, is what drove me to higher levels of education and know-how to reach stage 4.
In animal-assisted therapy, stage one of unconscious incompetence can look like this (all real-life examples from my experiences):
· you are eager to jump in and feel confident this will change your work forever
· you assume all your clients will love your therapy dog and your therapy dog will love all your clients
· you know your therapy dog partner is perfect in every way for the job
· you never see signs of stress in your dog because why would they be stressed?
· if you even notice opportunities for continuing education the topics sound simplistic and probably unnecessary
When working with older literacy and speech sound disorder kids and incorporating this model into goal-setting discussions I call this stage “blissful ignorance.”
Stage two of Conscious Incompetence may look like this as you begin incorporating animal-assisted interventions:
· you struggle to juggle managing your therapy dog’s needs with your client’s needs and sessions sometimes feel out of control
· you start out with every intention of including your therapy dog actively in a therapeutic activity, but when the client or dog aren’t responding as you had envisioned you send the dog to their bed and revert to a more traditional therapy activity instead
· you notice signs of stress in your dog but aren’t quite sure how to change things
· continuing education opportunities feel overwhelming because it seems like everyone knows so much more than you do
· you experience frequent self-doubt and realize this is going to be harder than you thought!
I also call this stage “Painful Awareness.” I think the name says it all!
Stages three and four, where you start to feel like a bona fide animal-assisted therapist
The time it takes transition from one stage to another varies and you may find yourself in different levels for different subskills of therapy animal handling.
I was thrust from stage one to stage two and then three very quickly in the realm of dog psychology and learning to read my therapy dog’s signals, because a few startling incidents forced me to take a very hard look at how I read my dog’s cues. It took a very long time to reach stage four where it feels natural, though I did finally get there (at least with my current therapy dog partners).
However, passing through the stages to learn to incorporate my therapy dogs to target a variety of client goals seemed quicker and easier.
In AAT, stage three Conscious Competence may look like:
· feeling in difficult moments like “I’ve got this, I can figure this out,” and changing aspects of the interaction mid-activity
· feeling more comfortable reaching out to mentors for advice because you realize they’ve been through this, too
· feeling comfortable leaving your therapy dog out of interactions if you sense they need a break or the interaction may not got well
· feeling excited to participate in continuing education with other animal-assisted interventionists because you know you’ll learn something useful
· taking joy and pride in interactions that are mutually enjoyable for your therapy dog and client
When working with clients, I refer to this as the “Know How” stage. You know how to do the skill, even though it still takes a lot of effort and you’re still going to make some mistakes.
Stage four, unconscious competence evolves even further to where:
· your sessions flow organically with decisions to include your therapy dog (or not) often occurring in the moment
· you can advocate for your therapy dog’s needs calmly and effectively (e.g., asking a parent to not hype Sky up at the start of a session as she’s already highly energized to work)
· you start to contemplate therapy animal welfare at a more philosophical level
· both you and your therapy dog feel energized even at the end of a work day because it’s taken less mental effort
· you feel like maybe you’re ready to tackle the project of starting with another therapy dog candidate to keep your AAT services going in the future
At this stage, the skills have become basically “Second Nature.”
Reflecting on how much I had learned working with my therapy dogs and wanting to let others know safe and effective animal-assisted speech therapy is achievable drove me to write Paws for Progress, the first book on the topic.
How to move through the stages to become a better therapy dog handler
In a word…education, education, education.
Adding a therapy animal to your practice means you are expanding the services you offer and will take a lot of effort of your part. Unlike many professional skills that can be learned intensively in a long weekend seminar or two, it will also likely take many months or even years as you learn to integrate the needs of yourself, your animal, and your clients. There’s a reason they call it “partnering” with a therapy dog instead of “commanding your therapy dog”!
If you recognize that you’re in stage one, two, or three with your animal-assisted interventions and want some guidance, I have resources to help. Specific skills like assessing your animal’s suitability for professional work, introducing clients to your furry partner, training helpful behaviors, reading and responding to a therapy dog’s communication signals, and incorporating an animal into goal-driven activities are covered in both the book, Paws for Progress: Integrating Animal-Assisted Interventions Into Your Speech-Language Pathology Practice and the self-paced, online course Talk to the Paw: Foundations for Therapy Animal Inclusion in a Professional Setting.
I’ve also included many resources, including videos, organizations, podcasts, books, and specific items on the Resources for Animal-Assisted Speech Therapy page of the Speech Dogs site. These are the tools I wish I’d had when I started. Don’t worry if you’re not a speech-language pathologist; most of the concepts apply regardless of your specific health or human service field.
And as always, follow on Instagram @speech_dogs or email me at sharlet@speechdogs.com with any specific questions you.
May your day be filled with puppy wiggles and children’s giggles,
Sharlet
