DU program aims for best-of-breed in studying human-animal bond 4/10/10

By John Davidson
The Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_14854978

A battered spouse refuses to enter a shelter without her pet. An ill elderly person declines hospital treatment because it means being away from an animal. A troubled child gains confidence and learns responsibility through learning to train a dog.
All of these applications are part of a groundbreaking program at the University of Denver that's exploring the many ways people and pets are connected. The emerging results could reshape practices in social work, law enforcement and public policy, according to leaders of DU's Institute for Human-Animal Connection.
"I see almost unlimited possibilities for our (institute) in both teaching and research," says Frank Ascione, the institute's executive director. He speaks about the program while seated in his office in Craig Hall, an older brick building on the western end of the DU campus.
Ascione's team has been looking into such issues as the link between violent behavior to humans and violence to animals. Specifically, Ascione was part of a study that documented cases of violent husbands harming family pets to torment abused wives.
The author of "Children and Animals: Exploring the Roots of Kindness," Ascione also recently testified in the Colorado General Assembly on behalf of a bill to include pets in domestic restraining orders. His office is cluttered with books and newspaper clippings about animals.
In another application of the people/ pet study, students in DU's Graduate School of Social Work, where the Institute for Human-Animal Connection is based, documented the positive impact of using therapy animals to teach responsibility and anger control to at-risk children.
These connections, once uncovered, may seem obvious in retrospect. But the science behind them is new and important, says James Herbert Williams, dean of the Graduate School of Social Work.

"We are one of the few schools doing this," Williams says. "It's taken the school to a different level."

Williams credited the support of two Denver-based organizations, the American Humane Association and the Animal Assistance Foundation, for the institute's success. All three have brought resources to the table, he says.
Institute staffers are working on two new efforts: enlisting experts from around the world as fellows and then posting their studies at Humananimalconnection.com, and conducting a painstaking study of public and social institutions in Colorado to come up with a better understanding of how animal-abuse cases are handled.
Phil Tedeschi, the institute's co-director, is involved in the study of Colorado institutions, which is called the Colorado Link Project. "We're trying to target each system independently — social welfare, law enforcement (and) the judicial system," he explains.

Researchers will look at animal-cruelty cases from the initial report, he says, checking "how they are investigated, what control the investigator has, what does and doesn't get investigated, how they are prosecuted and what penalties are handed down."

The goal is to come up with suggested improvements in practices every step of the way. "It kind of harkens back to the beginnings of the domestic-violence issue," he says.
Students are responding to the new approaches offered by the institute.
"I see it as a more unique and positive way to do things," says Alison Levy, a graduate student who works with kids in a program called Pawsitive Connection, which teaches youngsters how to train dogs and thus learn responsibility.

"The best part is I get to hang out with Marley," she adds of her research partner, a dark-coated, mixed-breed former shelter dog who's now part of the therapy program. Levy also believes that the institute is helping shape what she calls "a new generation of social workers."

John Davidson writes regularly about pet news and care issues: blogs.denverpost.com/fetch.