December 13, 2008
Mix troubled youngsters with unwanted dogs and you get ... a recipe for hope? That's the theory of a new programme being pioneered in Nelson. Geoff Collett reports on the Nelson Ark. -------------------- School never looked so good as to this bunch of youngsters. After all, it's so much better than the alternative.
They've experienced some horrors in their short lives. Some have been forced to live in conditions hardly fit for an animal. Few have known love before now. One spent most of his days shut away in a space hardly big enough to stand up in. Another was rescued from certain death at the hands of his "caregiver". One especially energetic little guy was found wandering in the traffic, his home a mystery.
Not surprising, then, that they've got grins a mile wide as they wait in the sun, outside the makeshift classroom on the outskirts of Richmond, gagging for the day's lesson to begin. They've been given a chance for a fresh beginning.
Inside the classroom, their mates are getting new chances too. Six other youngsters - these ones humans - are being given a lesson on diversity and respect, before they head out to renew fledgling bonds with their new buddies - the canine ones.
These six dogs and six teenagers are being used to trial a new idea in New Zealand, that if you bring together a young person with needs and an animal with needs, the bond that results can lift them both to a better place. They call it the Nelson Ark, and on Monday, its first ever class, run over the past six weeks or so but six years in the planning, will graduate, both dogs and people.
The two women behind it hope it will only be the start of a wider venture that will do much to improve the lives of those too easily marginalised. "There's evidence to support what we're doing, " says Karen Howieson, the co-founder of the Nelson Ark along with schoolteacher Susan Murray-Rifici. "With anything that's not tangible, people might think it's touchy-feely." But not only do they have the experience of similar programmes overseas to draw on and give them confidence, with the first pilot of the Nelson Ark coming to an end they are certain that this idea is going to float.
As the six teens venture into the sunlight from their classroom at the Nelson Kennel Association, the Ark's temporary base, it quickly becomes obvious that, if nothing else, friendships have been forged here.
Each of the children, all from Nayland College's learning support centre, has been paired with a dog for the duration of the programme, the match made carefully so the young human's needs and temperament suit the animal they have been given responsibility for. When they are not in the programme, all but one of the dogs have long-term foster homes to go to; in time, the Ark is intended to be as much about providing a safe shelter for abandoned animals as it will be about using human-animal interaction as a way of bringing new hope and understanding into troubled lives.
This intake of teens selected for the pilot have a variety of "issues" in their lives, but none, Murray-Rifici says, are young offenders or have behaviour problems. Later, the Ark hopes to cater to more challenging youngsters, but today, to the outsider, the group seems like your common or garden adolescent, the dogs, likewise. It doesn't take long, though, to realise that there is more going on here than the initial whiff of controlled chaos to be expected when dogs meet teenagers.
Starting with Jed. He's a border collie, a gentle, almost melancholic chap, the most timid of the bunch. Marguerite Besier, who supervises the dog-handling side of things for the programme (she has a tailor-made background, including teaching, nursing and dog training), recalls how early on, the dogs were inside with the children when Jed took a dislike to the noise. He crawled under a table and lay there, trembling.
Today, something else sets him off. The Ark folk speculate that it's the presence of a couple of male strangers, including a photographer with a long- barrelled lens. Jed's sad story emerges: he was supposed to have been a pig dog, but didn't measure up. His owner was an unsentimental sort who decided the best thing for Jed would be a bullet. Jed was scheduled to meet his end the same day he was picked up and delivered to the Ark.
Murray-Rifici speculates it's an unhappy association with guns that sets Jed off when he spies the camera. The dog yelps, cowers, starts quivering. For the rest of the day, he won't join the group, far too unhappy and anxious to do anything but let his young minder, James, cuddle and groom him, just as James crawled under the table that first day and comforted the frightened dog.
Today, Jed's unhappiness casts something of a pall, although, with the session under way, it's easy to miss that. Besier is teaching some more of the basics of dog control - how to get the animal to stay, for example. Some dogs are better at it than others. Ginny, a boisterous German shepherd cross, almost gets out of hand for her young minder, Charlotte, and gets time out.
Carla, a healthy and exuberant Dalmatian - who is apparently making up for a dearth of affection in her previous life, leaping up on whoever comes close and clasping them in her front legs - seems to spend most of her time dragging around a protesting teenage minder, Megan.
Then there's Mac, the sedate beardie, whose even, good-natured temperament and enthusiasm for his new mate, Matt, belies his miserable pre-Ark life as a rejected hand working on a livestock truck. Deemed good for nothing by his previous owner, he was relegated to living in a cage under a truck for up to 17 hours a day. He lost hair, had sores on his face.
Besier's face shines as she recounts the occasion, three weeks into the course - the time when neglected dogs offered a new lease on life typically start to discover new behaviours - when the lesson ended with an off-the-leash runaround. Mac took charge for the first time, leading the others loping and bounding about the paddock. Today, his contentment seems to be doubling by the minute.
Rounding out the pack is ultra-cute Scramble, a beardie-black labrador cross who was found wandering, abandoned, and has become the poster-pup for the Ark; and Girl, a stout, mumsy staffie who mothered Scramble when they met in the pound, and who rejoices in the company of teenage Ethan. The boy lies on the grass, nuzzling a delighted Girl until a mildly-alarmed Besier intervenes with some timely advice: "It's not such a good idea to let dogs lick your mouth because they lick their bottoms, " she counsels Ethan. "Have you thought about that? Yuck!"
"It's not yuck, " counters Ethan. Touche.
It's not all a lark, either. There have been plenty of dramas, tears, challenges. And that, Besier, Howieson and Murray- Rifici say, is precisely the point.
Dogs may not be judgmental, cruel, taunting, deceitful or critical, but they behave unpredictably and, at times, infuriatingly. As every dog lover knows, they also steal hearts, and there's one of the twists to the Ark: the teens get to spend quality time with them for six weeks, learning their quirks and sharing new life skills, and then it's over. Both dog and human go their separate ways at the end of the course, and in all likelihood won't see each other again. If it sounds like an unhappy ending, Howieson says that it is supposed to be the opposite: a relatively painless lesson for the people that relationships do come to an end, and it doesn't have to be a negative conclusion.
That is for down the track though. Murray-Rifici lists some of the other lessons the programme should teach young people in the meantime: a process to overcome abuse, neglect and grief while teaching self-esteem, empathy, conflict resolution, respect, anger management, compassion, responsibility . . .
Howieson, whose background includes experience in counselling and health promotion, and with the animal rights group Safe (Save Animals From Exploitation), talks of the changes she has seen in the youngsters on this course after little more than four weeks: they are far more confident, able to deal with situations, better at communicating. A month ago, a couple of them would barely talk. Watching the group working with their charges a week out from graduation, it's impossible to be sure which two she is talking about.
The Ark has ambitious goals and this pilot is about proving that it knows how it can get there. Future courses will be longer (10 weeks) and potentially deal with more challenging kids. It has a lot to prove. There is no precedent for this in New Zealand. But they cannot be accused of rushing into things. For six years, it has been talked about and worked on.
Murray-Rifici has travelled to her native Canada to learn from one of the pioneering organisations in the field, the Yapp programme, and to the United States to look at a project there working with shelter dogs and violence intervention. They have sought and received support or other interest from some heavyweight organisations, including the Ministry for Youth Development, the Canterbury Community Trust, the Lottery Grants Board, the McKee Family Trust, the Ministry of Education, a small clutch of business sponsors.
Their dream is to not rely on grants to survive. They plan to develop their own site (they have been leased some reserve land in Richmond's lower Queen St from the Tasman District Council) and build kennels for abandoned dogs, a safe place where they won't face the prospect of death if they go unclaimed. Suitable animals from the shelter will join future programmes and finish with skills to find a better life in the outside world; a parallel, hopefully, of the human participants' experience .
This Monday, graduation day, will be a big day for the Nelson Ark. The "stakeholders", as the jargon calls those who have stumped up in cash or kind to help the thing along, are expected to show up in force to see how well the first class has performed. Certificates will be awarded to all 12 participants, and there will, everyone knows, be some tears as the new friends part.
But all going to plan, there will be some newfound happiness, too.
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