Canine compassion helps kids reach summit

POULSBO — Kimbra Kern’s dedication to helping children who have endured traumatic experiences and rescuing homeless animals were at one time separate endeavors that the veteran North Kitsap learning specialist and speech pathologist engaged in.

Kern found a new passion, however, when she combined them.

She started rescuing animals a decade ago. One day, she decided to bring her dog, Rainbow, to work with her for the children she was counseling to play with. One such little boy especially enjoyed the dog — though Kern had no idea why because he refused to talk or verbally communicate due to a traumatic experience.

The next week, she left the dog at home, and the boy did something Kern never expected.

“Where’s Rainbow?” he asked to Kern’s amazement.

The boy began to slowly open up amidst the dog’s unconditional love and affection through various licks, nose-rubbing and tail-wagging. Kern eventually pieced together from the boy that he’d endured the trauma of seeing his mother being beaten by a stranger and the tragedy had rendered him speechless.

“The anger melted away,” she said through the sessions with Rainbow.

Since, Kern has utilized many different animals to help uncover all kinds of internal issues and trauma in her students. She said she’s even able to decipher, through the dog therapy, that someone had been sexually assaulted. A dog or any animal, she said, can offer a no-questions-asked kind of love and affection that can help open the most repressed memories and traumas in children.

“Animals are 100 percent honest,” Kern said. “There are no mixed messages.”

In the past year, she’s found a further use for the dogs at North Kitsap School District’s Summit Program, for children with behavior issues. Summit is directed out of portables behind Poulsbo Junior High School.

Kern, with the help of Summit teacher Phil Campbell and others, was able to bring rescued dogs, that had either been abandoned or abused, and pair them with children that are working through their own behavioral issues.

The concoction might seem contradictory — but Furry Tale Farms animal shelter owner Suzannah Sloan will tell you otherwise.

“You put troubled kids together with troubled animals and amazing things happen,” Sloan said.

Furry Tale, which has been in operation for seven years, has helped rehabilitate 300 dogs and several other animals species, including horses, rabbits and pigs.

The group of about a half dozen Summit students began visiting Furry Tale Farms on Bainbridge every Friday. The program has been so successful, Sloan said, that they’re going to continue it annually.

The therapy’s effectiveness directly stems from the dogs’ easygoing nature and honest dispositions.

“They don’t care who you are, they’ll love you anyway,” Sloan said. “The dogs say, ‘This is what we are and this is what we do.’”

Throughout the year, the students have been training their dogs lessons in discipline, patience and positive reinforcement — though deficits in those skills may be the very reason the students came to Summit.

“These kids are really great but their behavior gets in the way,” Campbell said. “When they work with the animals, however, they can see, sometimes, reflections of their own behavior.”

Part of the uniqueness of the program is that the students are completely aware of their growth in working with the animals.

“They teach us to be more calm, teach us not to get mad so easily,” said Summit student James Reed, 15. “It also teaches us that anything can teach anybody, and anybody can teach anything.”

And the virtues learned by the students translate directly into the classroom.

“When they’re with Mr. Campbell and (they’re) being impatient about a math problem, he’ll say, ‘What did you learn with the dogs,’” Kern said.

The program got off to an admittedly rocky start in September 2004, as the students weren’t getting along and held none of the skills with which to train an animal, especially a troubled dog.

“At the beginning, I could only bring one dog at a time and it was all about blaming each other,” Kern said. “Problem solving was virtually non-existent.”

As the year went on, however, training the dogs united the students as each set their own goals for helping the canines.

“At the beginning of the year, we were all at each other’s throats,” admitted Summit student Donny Diaz, 12. “Now, we’re all getting along. We’re all friends.”

The skills they gain along the way have helped their growth as both a group and individually, said paraeducator Bob Reister, an aid in the Summit Program.

“They’re learning respect, sincerity, friendship and ownership,” he commented. “They’re gaining respect for each other.”

Those skills are exactly the way each student needs to integrate back into the classroom at their area school, Campbell commented, and many of the students are on the way to doing just that. But it isn’t just about how they act around others, but also how they treat themselves — another characteristic aided by their work with the canines.

“Once you learn to respect and value animals,” Sloan said, “you learn to respect and value yourself.”

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Part 2 of the series will examine further the healing power of dogs, whose skills can be greatly beneficial to humans yet are still largely unknown.

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