Learning to Love

Catching the first signs

Gradually, Anicare took shape. The program was originally developed to identify and treat adult offenders, but as Shapiro and Randour traveled around the country providing workshops to law enforcement, social workers, and other professionals, they kept being asked "Could children be assessed and treated the same way as adults?" And that's how Anicare Child was born.

Both programs use the same two key elements. The first is assessment - identifying a person as a potential or active abuser.

"With children, age is critical," says Shapiro. "Three-year-olds can't be given the responsibility for proper care, but if a six-year-old is throwing the dog down the stairs, it's a different ball game. By six and eight, you can really start assessing a child's behavior.

"Most kids go through a stage of experimenting with animals, and that can be abusive in many instances. You have to assess what kind of abuse it is and the age of the child. If an eight- or nine-year-old uses violence to solve problems rather than talking it out, they've already established conduct disorder behavior. By that age, the pattern is set, but you can still intervene. If at age six, a kid is really into animal abuse, it's a pretty good sign that he or she is going to become one of these disordered kids because of their inability to control impulses. So when a six-year-old does something to the dog or cat, a parent or teacher has to assess the child right then. They have to determine if there are attachment disorder problems that are causing the child to displace anger."

After assessment comes treatment. With Anicare, that means helping abusers develop a critical emotion that they lack - empathy.

"Kids who have difficulty forming attachments often lack empathy - and that starts the behavior that gets them into trouble," says Ward. "It's easier to establish empathy with animals."

In the Project Second Chance program, the kids rise at 6 a.m. to walk their dogs. They feed and groom the animals throughout the day, spend playtime with the dogs, and take them on a few more walks before bedtime. They come together as a pair, always under the watchful eyes of supervisors. And they attend therapy sessions with their animals. They're asked basic questions and must respond not as themselves but as their dog. What would their dog say? What is the dog feeling? What emerges from the sessions most often is a sudden recognition of what an animal feels when faced with less than kind human hands.

"The kids finally get what's going on," says Ward. "They recognize that the dog has feelings. When they can attach those emotions to the animal, it's a lot harder to think of it as just a dog. They're able to see that the dog or cat they've mistreated is afraid, that the animal was going up to someone hoping to get some compassion and got something else instead.

"Answering as the animal when they're asked questions about what it feels like to be hungry or scared or what it feels like to be shouted at and told you're terrible reaches them. As they tap into the animal's feelings, they see from the animal's point of view. It's the animal saying to them, 'I came to you for help and you threw rocks at me.' Everybody can relate to that. It's the same as, 'I came home from school, and I was feeling bad, and you yelled at me.' That's how we start connecting."

Along with the sessions, the children keep journals about their experience. Their counselors and therapists read these, and they measure the child's emotional progress, looking for the signs of empathy being formed.

"We're trying to find specific statements that show they've been able to integrate something," Ward explains. "When they write things like they hope the dog will go to a loving family who won't abuse or mistreat the animal, that's a good measurement. It's not egocentric thinking of what a good job they're doing. They're not writing about themselves; they're thinking of the animal."

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