Recently there was a beautiful article, “Wonder Dog,” in The New York Times Magazine about an emotionally troubled boy who was helped by a devoted dog. I thought about this story this past week when my beloved dog, a lab-border collie mix who we adopted nine years ago at the age of 2, died rather suddenly.

The thing is, he really helped me out with my emotional regulation, especially in my role as mother to my daughter, who as a young teenager had an incredible capacity to push my buttons. In the interests of full disclosure, I also had a lot of help from a wonderful therapist in understanding the roots of this issue. But Jasper was there with us on the front lines.

Whenever we would get into any kind of conflict and I would start to raise my voice, Jasper would immediately get up from his dog bed and come and lie right next to me. At once I would feel calm. My breathing slowed and I am quite sure my blood pressure went down. Often I could identify some event in her life that was causing her stress and anxiety that she was now taking out on me. I was able to remain calm in the face of assault. Jasper helped me to much more rapidly defuse these encounters.

The therapeutic value of animals for children is well known. I often recommend horseback riding as an activity for children with problems of emotional regulation. Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry, in his description of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics that he developed for working with traumatized children, writes:

“Dogs have the capacity to provide the unconditional accepting and repetitive nurturing experiences required to help some of these children.”