The healing power of animals: people with pets have reduced levels of stress, depression, and heart risk. Find happiness and well-being through this primal connection

ELLA, A FOUNDLING, looks-like the love child of a Lab and a greyhound. She has snow-white fur, an ear-to-ear grin, and--according to her two-legged companion, Michael Konik--a penchant for wearing sporty bandanas. Because Ella also has such a winning way with strangers, Konik believed she might have a career in cheering up the sick. So-he enrolled her in training to become a therapy dog. Now, outfitted in her official red vest, she is a beloved visitor at Los Angeles homes, hospitals, and shelters.

On his first outing with Ella to a nursing home, Konik was filled with trepidation. "I'm generally very uncomfortable in those kinds of places," he admits. Ella, however, was her usual perky self, happy as always to make new friends. One resident, a wheelchair-bound man named Dick, was physically immobilized from a stroke. His nurse said he did not speak. But after she placed Dick's gnarled hand on Ella's head and helped him gently stroke her fur, he croaked out, "Nice dog." The nurse's eyes went wide with astonishment, and Konik's filled with tears.

Even among the healthy, animals provide "instant social lubrication," says Konik. He was so pleased and moved by Ella's sterling work as a therapy dog that he treated her to a vacation, which he chronicled in the book Ella in Europe. "Language barriers, cultural barriers, class barriers--all those obstacles came tumbling down when I had her with me," he says. "I interacted with so many wonderful people that I never would've met without her there."

mind/body benefits

STORIES OF ANIMALS like Ella breaking through to lonely, withdrawn, sick, or distressed human beings are legion. Of course, anyone who shares a home with a pet--be it furred, feathered, finned, or scaled--knows that animal/human interaction fosters well-being.

Evidence of this healthy connection fills books, cable TV shows, and now medical journals. Over the last few years, researchers have discovered that owning a pet can reduce blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol; lower triglyceride levels; lessen stress; result in fewer doctor visits; and alleviate depression. Infants who live in a household with dogs are less likely to develop allergies later in life, not only to animals but also to other common allergens. And there is anecdotal evidence suggesting that dogs can detect bladder cancer and predict the onset of seizures.

While these studies have focused primarily on companion pets, the scope of animal-assisted therapy is much wider. Since 1988, the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, Fla., has run programs to enrich the lives of children and adults with special needs by working on increasing motor skills, lessening stress, and focusing attention. "Once they've faced the challenge of transferring into the water with these majestic marine mammals, their self-esteem grows," says Joan Mehew, director of the center's Dolphin Child Therapy Program. "The dolphins seem to sense the disability of the people and adjust their behavior accordingly. For instance, they'll reduce the speed and power of a 'dorsal pull' to accommodate the swimmer's condition."

Back on land, psychotherapist Marlena Deborah McCormick, Ph.D.--working with her parents, Adele Von Rust McCormick and Thomas E. McCormick--has pioneered the use of horses in treating emotionally disturbed teens and adults. (Together, the McCormicks wrote a book on the subject, Horses and the Mystical Path.) She recalls a seminal experience: "My mother, in her very intuitive way, introduced a withdrawn and mute young man to horses when nothing else could reach him," she says. The young man learned to ride and started talking to other equestrians, eventually getting a job working with horses. It not only changed his life, it changed the way McCormick and her parents practice psychiatric medicine. "We began to see that nature, and the horse in particular, is able to reach people in a profound way," she notes.

The family has expanded the scope of equine therapy and now offers retreats for those suffering from the stress of urban life. "Horses center people because in their presence you must be still," says McCormick. "They respond negatively to people who are too hyper."

The participants also learn lessons about nonverbal communication and leadership they can make use of in their everyday lives. "The authority you have with horses can't be from any rhetoric," explains McCormick. "It has to be authentic or the horse won't respond."

ancient bonds

FOR MOST OF US, animals bring out our nurturing and protective natures and make us feel more responsible. We are touched not only by the companionship and cuddle factors, but by the unwavering loyalty and lack of guile. "Dolphins accept humans regardless of our differences," says Mehew.

But is there more at work here? Could we be hard-wired to connect with animals? "Basically, we're the same people in our brains as we were 125,000 years ago," says Susan Chernak McElroy, author of All My Relations: Living With Animals as Teachers and Healers. "Back then, animals were everything to us--food, shelter, clothing, spiritual relatives." Her theory is that only those humans who successfully developed a dose understanding of animals and were enmeshed with the natural world managed to survive.