“Are you showing them around?” Cullen asks.
I nod. “I thought I’d give a general introduction, tell you what we’re hoping to achieve here, and show you around the place.” I glance at Beth, who gives me an encouraging smile. I’m guessing she can sense the fact that I’m a little nervous at this first step of bringing the staff together.
I take a deep breath. “So you’ve probably seen the sign at the front—we’re going to be an Animal-Assisted Therapy Center. What does that mean? We’ll be treating clients suffering from a range of disorders from PTSD to anxiety and depression with animal-led therapy. Animals have been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rate and to ease anxiety, they provide comfort, they help balance and motor skills, and they can help with social interaction and focus, for example with clients who have Alzheimer’s.”
“So how does it work?” Tyr asks. “Each therapist has a dog in their room with them, and the clients pet the dogs?”
“Like in the Farmer’s in his Den,” Natalie says. Tyr looks at her and raises an eyebrow. “You know,” she continues, “the nursery rhyme? The farmer wants a wife, and she wants a baby, and the baby wants a dog…”
“I thought the baby wants a nurse, and the nurse wants a dog,” Isla says.
Natalie snaps her fingers. “Oh, that’s right, and then we all pat the dog.”
“I don’t have kids,” Tyr says.
“But you were one once, right?”
Tyr glares at her, and I wonder whether I should tell Natalie that he’s all bark and no bite, but she just grins at him, showing she’s not bothered by his brusque manner. I chuckle, sensing that she’s going to make his life a misery with her sunny nature.
“Yes,” Cullen says, trying not to laugh, “that’s part of it, but depending on the client’s problems and goals, we can also introduce activities like grooming, brushing, walking, playing with, or feeding the animals.”
“Oh…” Dane says, “yeah, I thought it was just about having an animal in the therapy room as well.”
“Sometimes it’s as simple as the dog being in the room,” I reply. “Other times it’s structured—walking them, grooming them, and using the animal as part of a goal-based plan.”
“I forgot you were a real therapist,” Isla says.
I lift my eyebrows as the others laugh. “You thought I was faking it?”
“No!” she insists.
“You almost sound as if you know what you’re talking about,” Beth adds, and Isla giggles.
“I’d give up there,” Tyr says. “They’re clearly going to gang up on us.”
“Damn straight,” Natalie replies.
Beth laughs, her eyes dancing, and it hits me then how relaxed she looks when she’s not trying to carry the weight of Jude’s mood on her shoulders. She looks younger. Lighter. And I have to admit that I like being the reason she’s smiling.
“Actually, Isla came up with a great acronym for what we do here,” she says.
“If it involves the word ‘ass’, I don’t want to know,” Cullen says.
Isla chuckles. “No, seriously. Peace, Awareness, Wellbeing, and Strength. I thought we could maybe stencil it on the walls of the Den.”
“The Den?” I ask.
“Sorry,” she says, “it’s what we’ve been calling the living room.”
“It’s perfect.” I feel an inner glow at the thought of how everyone’s contributing to the creation of the center, and how it’s gradually taking shape. I look at Beth, and she winks at me, so clearly she feels the same.
“So anyway,” Cullen continues, “the idea is to have the large central room—the Den—as a meet and greet waiting area, very relaxed. We’ve had the idea of regular open days, offering coffee and cakes, where people can come and find out what we do here.”
I’m distracted by Beth as she crouches to straighten Queenie’s collar. Queenie nuzzles her hand and Beth kisses her head, and it feels as if the sun has come out. For the first time, I can see her here, every day, fitting into this place like she was always meant to be part of it. Like she was meant to be a part of my life, too.
Conscious of falling quiet, I clear my throat and say, “The offices will be this side—” I gesture across at the left side of the building “—one for me and Cullen, and then they’re going to knock down the partition there to make a large one for hot desks for everyone else.”
“I thought we could have a set of lockers there,” Isla says, “as we’re hoping clients feel comfortable wandering around, so we’ll have somewhere safe for our valuables during the day.”
