\n<\/p>\n
I got Nya, a German shepherd, when she was a puppy. She has such a good\u00a0temperament \u2013 she\u2019s really calm\u00a0around people.<\/p>\n
When she was five years old, I\u00a0decided to register her with Pets As Therapy, an organisation that brings therapy pets into hospitals, care homes, schools and other places to\u00a0befriend people, and help reduce stress and anxiety.<\/p>\n
I work as the safeguarding and crime prevention lead for TransPennine Express (TPE). Nya comes out with me on the rail network, attending events to raise awareness of mental health support.<\/p>\n
She is TPE\u2019s registered therapy dog\u00a0\u2013 it\u2019s the first train operator to have its own \u2013 and I\u2019m really proud of that. A lot of people have anxiety about travelling. She can help with that and with feelings of depression.<\/p>\n
At one event, there was a woman struggling with low mood. She spent 20 minutes with Nya, just rolling on\u00a0the floor, stroking her, cuddling her. She came up to me and said that\u00a0it really helped to break her negative chain of thoughts.<\/p>\n
Nya puts a smile on people\u2019s faces. After they\u2019ve met her, people always tell me: \u201cThat made my day a lot better.\u201d She uplifts everyone around her and gets people talking.<\/p>\n
<\/span>\u2018My little shadow\u2019 \u2026 Stephen and Nya in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n Nya looks like a wolf \u2013 people always come up to us whenever we\u2019re out because of this, so she\u2019s like a celebrity. I\u2019ve got two young kids and she comes on the school runs with me. She does some really cool tricks, including one where she will walk or run in between my legs for as long as I want her to. She can spin around, roll\u00a0and jump up with both paws.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve done school presentations with\u00a0her, and one in Manchester ended with an impromptu showcase of tricks, which got a round of applause.<\/p>\n She\u2019s very food-oriented; she has her paws crossed that everyone we meet will have a dog biscuit on them, but I always carry loads with me.<\/p>\n Taking her out for a walk helps me\u00a0switch off \u2013 it keeps me grounded and lowers the feelings of anxiety that I get sometimes. Nya\u2019s helped me before when I\u2019ve been feeling down.<\/p>\n I was a police officer for 20 years and you\u2019re exposed to a lot of difficult situations \u2013 it definitely took its toll. So I wanted to help other people by\u00a0making her a therapy dog.<\/p>\n We have a really strong bond; we can read each other\u2019s energy. It\u2019s nice\u00a0to have someone miss me when\u00a0I leave the room \u2013 she\u2019s like my\u00a0little\u00a0shadow. As told to Ann\u00a0Lee<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our <\/strong><\/em>letters<\/strong><\/em> section, please <\/strong><\/em>click here<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I got Nya, a German shepherd, when she was a puppy. She has such a good\u00a0temperament \u2013 she\u2019s really calm\u00a0around people. When she was five years old, I\u00a0decided to register her with Pets As Therapy, an organisation that brings therapy pets into hospitals, care homes, schools and other places to\u00a0befriend people, and help reduce stress<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2752,8867,37,4008,1031,24541,9598,24542,628],"class_list":{"0":"post-49519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dog","9":"tag-forget","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-ill","12":"tag-mental","13":"tag-nya","14":"tag-pet","15":"tag-smile","16":"tag-therapy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}