The Scientific Basis of Therapy Dog Work

Dr. Dawn A. Marcus of the Department of Anesthesiology of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has written a review paper, The Science Behind Animal-Assisted Therapy, in the medical journal, Current Pain and Headache Reports, 17, 322, April 2013.  Dr. Marcus is the author of Therapy Dogs in Cancer Care, Springer, New York, 2012, and The Power of Wagging Tails: A Doctor's Guide to Dog Therapy and Healing, Demos Health, 2011. She is...

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American Pariahs

I have met a few saints in my life.  One of them was A. Gridley Hall.  We worked together in southern New Jersey.  Grid was well known among legal services lawyers up and down the east coast in the 1970s for his work with migrant farmworkers.  Having spent part of his childhood in Spain, the son of a diplomat, Grid’s Spanish was fluent.  Once a farm owner threatened him with a shotgun if he kept coming onto his land to see the Dominican workers, families forced to live in their cars and an abandoned barn because the farmer...

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Dogs of Detention, from Abu Ghraib to Camp Bucca and Camp Delta

There is probably no image more associated with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 than the photo of Specialist Lynndie England holding what appears to be a dog leash attached to a naked prisoner.  Investigations into the abuse revealed that at least some of the five Military Working Dogs (two Army, three Navy) working at the prison were used to intimidate and frighten the prisoners.  Some prisoners were apparently bitten...

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