Full transcript below – or watch as a video with subtitles.
Pete Lewin is a paramedic and director of Pete Lewin Newfoundlands.
Pete and his pack of beautiful emotional support dogs take people out to swim with them (including frontline workers and first responders) with often transformative results. In this episode, he talks movingly about his work with the dogs and also some of the hard times he’s been through in his paramedic career.
Pete’s website: http://petelewinnewfoundlands.co.uk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeteLewinNewfoundlands
I’d love to connect with you so come and find me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.
Sign up to my weekly newsletter here to get updates about the podcast as well as psychology tips and insights direct to your inbox.
Follow and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!
Transcript
[music]
Dr. Paula Redmond: Hi, I’m Dr. Paula Redmond, a clinical psychologist, and you are listening to the When Work Hurts podcast. On this show, I want to explore the stories behind the statistics of the mental health crisis facing healthcare professionals today, and to provide hope for a way out through compassion, connection, and creativity. Join me as I talk to inspiring clinicians and thought leaders in healthcare about their unique insights and learn how we can support ourselves and each other when work hurts.
[music]
This week’s guest is Peter Lewin, paramedic, and director of Pete Lewin Newfoundlands. Pete and his pack of beautiful emotional support dogs take people out to swim with them with often transformative results. In this episode, he talks movingly about his work with the dogs and also some of the hard times he’s been through in his paramedic career. I started off by asking him to describe the Newfoundland breed.
Peter Lewin: The Newfoundland dog is about 68 to 80 kilos of big fur. They’re the only dog around that swims like a polar bear. They have this massive head on them, which is bigger than a lot of the little dogs that you see. They have this big coat, which is the double-coated one. The undercoat is oily based, so that keeps the dogs warm in the water.
The outer coat is quite a long fur, which when they go into the water that acts as buoyancy so it floats up because it’s full of air. They’ve got a great big tail that they use as a rudder when they’re in moving water. They have webbed feet, and like I say, they’re the only dog that swims like a polar bear. They don’t do a doggy paddle as such. They do more of a breaststroke if you like, and the power that they produce is incredible and immense.
When you’re being pulled by the dogs in the water, you can just feel it. From the top it’s a bit like watching swans swimming where they’re so elegant above the water but below is the engine room and that is exactly the same with the Newfoundland, they just don’t look as if they’re moving at the top, but there’s some massive power underneath churning them legs around and pulling. One dog alone can pull up to 12 people in buoyancy.
They’re not small dogs and they’re not an easy dog. As a breed, when people ask me about wanting a Newfoundland, I tell them all the bad things about them first because they’re big, they’re clumsy, lots of slobber, they eat a lot. There’s lots of other stuff. Oh, you open a tin of beans and it’s got a dog hair in it but they’re so fantastically lovable as well.
People say to me, “Well, you don’t really want me to have one, do you?” I said, “No, I didn’t say that. I’m just telling you the pitfalls of having one.” Now, let me tell you the good side, they’re loyal, they’re gentle, they are clumsy, yes, but they can be really gentle. They’ll look after you. Certainly, for what we are doing, they’re looking after other people, and to have a pet– Here we go. To have a pet that can do that, people say it’s like swimming with dolphins and then people say it’s better than swimming with dolphins. My dogs are pets. They’re not wild animals brought into captivity to do this. They’re my pets and they just love doing it.
Dr. Paula: Tell us how you got into working with them in this way.
Peter: Obviously, we did all the trials for a bit and then I developed alternative trials where with the original trials, you are sending the dog away to do the test if you like and they’re swimming 25 meters, 20 meters out, doing a test on their own. My opinion is the dog works better because he loves you and he wants to be with you. I set up alternative trials where you work with the dog in the water. The whole thing was lovely. People really enjoyed doing it, but it was never really going to take off because people are all into the original tests, if you like.
I got quite bored with the tests and the judging and personalities, politics within big groups, and my dog’s better than your dog. Well, I’m not interested in that. I then joined the Heart team, which is part of the ambulance service that has this area response team. In that, we’re trained in working at height, breathing apparatus trained, confined space, urban search and rescue, swift water rescue, numerous other things for multi-casualty events and stuff that, but when we did training, they allowed us to take the dogs in and do some training with my team and there we started to develop different maneuvers for getting people out in the water.
Dr. Paula: The dogs helping to rescue?
Peter: Rescue. Absolutely, Yes. The dogs are then becoming rescue dogs. Anyway, we set up and we developed all these different maneuvers. Me and a couple of the others as a team. When I left the heart team, I carried on doing these maneuvers. One of them is called a C spine mobilization maneuver. Somebody that’s come off a jet ski at 60, 70 miles an hour could have a C spine injury, making a human cradle around the patient, supporting the head and the neck so they’re in line, so head and rescuer that floats underneath the patient. His legs then go around the patient’s hips if you like, and hold onto the patient’s hips. He’s then resting his arms on the patient’s shoulders and then his hands around the face on either side to give them that support.
A bit like a neck support. The leg-end rescuer then goes and floats underneath the patient where he gets the feet on his chest holding onto the ankle and then his legs float up and trap leg end rescuer’s legs against the body that makes that person secure. Then the dog comes out and pulls them to shore.
Dr. Paula: Pulls all three.
Peter: All three to shore now then. When you’ve got this head-end rescuer who’s looking after the patient, the dog’s pulling all of them really, really smoothly. It’s that look how graceful that dog is, but what’s happening underneath so it’s pulling them to shore with this massive power. The head-end rescuer is making a bit of a bow wave, which goes then around the patient because he’s missing the patient and that patient doesn’t know they’re moving. Now, we did a training session in Grimsby docks with a guy, he was 26-stone, a training officer from the fire service. He didn’t think he was moving. He says, “Well, this don’t work very well. We’re not getting anywhere.” I say, “Mate, we’re 10-foot away from the shore.”
Dr. Paula: What do the dogs hold onto? How are they pulling?
Peter: When we’re using it for people, I have all the proper equipment we use what’s called a cow’s tail off the back of the buoy of the head-end rescuer. Then we put an extra line onto that with a carabiner. Then the dog has a rope toy about six to eight inches long, bright yellow floating rope and that’s what he works for. Now, he’ll come and grab that and that’s all he is got. He’s pulling three people with that rope toy in his mouth, just shows you the power, their bite to be able to do that.
Then he pulls them to shore and it could be anything up 200 meters out and they’ll still do it and then they’ll just keep going. Everybody that’s been the patient have said how smooth it is. I’ve shown different fire services around the country and they quite like the maneuver. It’s never going to be used, probably never get used. When we started looking at the emotional support, what we did was, instead of it all being a shouty, shouty, I’m in trouble. We’ve calmed everything down to this really sedate way of doing things.
Dr. Paula: Can I just pause you there? When you say, when we started looking at the emotional supports, tell me about that–
Peter: How that started was, so we’ve developed all these maneuvers for a rescue. We were never going to get used for a real rescue. One of the girls in the group, Tracy, she’s always been involved with me doing water safety classes in schools so I do little workshops for primary schools because I think this old bald bloke waffling away in front of a class. It’ll just be over the edge and out the window. We take one of the dogs in and that’s your trigger. Now you’ve got a great big new family.
Dr. Paula: They’re all hooked.
Peter: Absolutely. It works perfectly well with having the dogs there and we do dry land rescues with them in the classroom and we get the kids sitting down being the sea and all that rocking around as if they’re in the water and have somebody at the back of them. It’s just using the imagination to make that lesson a little bit more exciting for them. Anyway, I went around, see Tracy one day. I said, look we are going to have to change that direction. We’re never going to get used for the real rescue. This is seven years ago we talked about 9/11 dogs. God, that was emotional reading stuff upon them and what they were doing for the guys, and just to add a little bit to that. I was in Hawaii a few weeks ago on holiday and friends who I went with our firefighter paramedics over there and a guy who was coming down from Pennsylvania to Hawaii to meet us. Honored to meet this guy. He survived cancer and he was one of the guys that went into the lift shafts to get body parts out and stuff. Doing what I do for a living. You think my job is quite easy compared to what he’s had to do
Dr. Paula: You mentioned the 9/11 dogs, how were dogs being used in that context?
Peter: They were being used, I can’t remember the dog’s name, Eliza, I think the dog’s name was the lady that got it, wanted to use them as a PAT dog. She thought she was going to use him as a PAT dog.
Dr. Paula: As a therapy dog.
Peter: Yes. For the public. Where the guys were getting the bodies out of the rubble and stuff. They used to be doing it for an hour, two hours at the most, and then come away and time out across the river. Is it the Hudson River that comes to? They had a welfare setup over there and these people have got the dogs there. Well, this lady was asked take her dog to that. The story is the guys were going out and just talking to the dogs, not the people. Just the dogs, and saying to the people afterward after been chatting to the dogs for an hour and the dogs–
Dr. Paula: Great listeners.
Peter: Yes. Dogs are just going to sit, they’re not going to argue not going to talk back or anything. These guys, and that’s what they were doing. It’s emotional, isn’t it?
Dr. Paula: Yes.
Peter: Because you’ve got this animal that lives with us that’s helping these other people. We’re helping the dogs to have a better life, I suppose, but look what the dogs are doing to pay us back. Incredible. Absolutely, that’s why I get passionate about working dogs, I suppose.
Dr. Paula: Yes. Just to take you back Peter, to where we were in this story about you having this conversation about how you could make use of the dogs in a different way.
Peter: Yes, sorry about that. I was off track a bit, but it’s all relevant, I suppose.
Dr. Paula: Yes.
Peter: Me and Tracy got chatting about this and she said, “I’m going to take you back two years.” I’ve never told this story to anybody, she said, “You were at an event for a cancer charity thing. There was a lady who’d got cancer and they had this bit of an event on, and we took the dogs there to just to show people what they’re doing, get having a bit of a swim.” Well, Tracy was late getting there and I do remember it. I can remember being stood at the back of the car with her and she wasn’t her normal self, so we said, come on let’s get your gear up and that. When she got a wetsuit and went out, swam out with her. We swam out probably 40 meters. She said, “Oh God, this is helping me so much.” Then she says about the dogs, sorry, Jen’s coming in. Do you know what?
[laughs].
Peter: Anyway, and she says that morning, the reason she was late getting there was she took an overdose, she got troubles at work, family problems. Just her life was at a bad place, was in this dark place. When Boris, the old dog that we had at the time, swam out, she said, his eyes, his beautiful, big eyes look at you. She said, “He’s not judging, he’s not condemning. All he is doing is swimming out and taking you back to shore.” She said that floating back with him was just the most incredible feeling I’ve ever had. It’s as if everything had been lifted off my shoulders and my life was back to normal.
Dr. Paula: That was the start of you thinking about?
Peter: Well that was it. That was a bit of a light bulb moment I suppose. We said, well, amazing. Let’s see what happens. We started, I trained the dogs anyway. I was still always going in the water with them.
Dr. Paula: When you say the water, Peter, is it the sea, is it a lake, river?
Peter: We use inland water because I live in Leicestershire. We’re pretty landlocked here, so I’ve had various lakes and stuff I’ve used in the past. We started just sort of putting it out there to the public a little country shows we’re doing these emotional support swims. We are not a therapist, I’m not a counselor. They’re not PAT dogs, they’re emotional support dogs. It was just like, let’s say how it goes. Well, one of the first people that turned up after this show we’d done said, “I’d like to book my, mum in.” We met her at the car park of the lake we use in Leicestershire. She turned up and saw the dogs in the back of the truck and had a bit of a smile.
We got a change into all the gear, wetsuit, dry suit, whatever it was for time of year, buoyancy aids because everything has to be dead safe. Anyway, after about, I don’t know, half an hour or so with the lady being in the water with the dogs, the daughter came up to me who was on dry land. She says, “Can I have a word?” “Yes, of course. What’s up?” She said, “Whatever’s happening in that water I have not seen my mom smile like that for years.” It was just this something’s happening. Something’s happening in that water now. Yes, we know about the cold water therapy, we know about dog therapy, but we’ve really hit on something with this mixing the two together. The fact that it seems to be working and that all the dogs doing is swimming out to the patient to me with a person. I call them patients, I’m sorry. Then, and pulling them back to shore. They’re doing nothing else but the dogs pulling them to shore and that’s it.
Dr. Paula: Just paint the scene, so the person would get into a wetsuit and all sorts of things?
Peter: When we run an event, we have a couple of gazebos up and a changing tent, and a table with some coffee on it. The team turns up and everything else puts out on, we have the dogs out either on the trailer. A couple of the dogs are loose, running around because they’re safe to do so. People turn up and one thing I don’t want people to do when they turn up is to feel not part of it. We’re doing emotional support. These people are coming who probably a little bit in dark place may have that suffering with old anxiety, depression, PTSD, whatever. They don’t need to be there with more anxiety of what’s happening. They’re going have enough of that thinking, what’s it going to be like working and swimming with these great big dogs and might be scared of the water. You don’t know.
Anybody’s walking up towards us where all the gazebos, I’ll go meet them and introduce myself. “Hi, I’m Peter.” Now, I’m a bit outward-going anyway. I don’t know if you’d noticed. I’m not afraid to talk to people. My job makes me like that I suppose. Anyway, when they all get there, we sort of then get them all chatting. Now some of these people don’t know each other and it’s quite interesting to watch the connection being made if you like. We then getting them into the wetsuits or dry suits, depending on the weather, depending on what they want to wear. The dogs have got buoyancy aids on as well. We go down to the lake and we get the people in the water for start just to see what their abilities are. We have about a 40-meter swim out, 40-meter swim back.
They’re loving it already. They’re loving the fact that they’re floating about. They’ve not got to worry about treading water or anything. It’s just laying on their back, taking it all in. Because it’s a lake, you’ve got all the environmental sounds as well. Doesn’t matter if it’s raining, but it’s peace and quiet. It’s natural, which is what I’m trying to do is take people away from everyday life for just a few hours. Let’s take them away from everything that causes people problems. Then what we then do is we have the dogs in the water with them. So yes, we have got PAT dogs, but they’re very wet. People will be in the water holding dogs for us.
That is something special for people as well. It’s like some people come just to do that, just to hold the dog and sit with them in the water. Then what we do is I’ll swim out 25, 30 meters. Take the first person with me, get them in the water, and call one of the dogs out. We’ve got Storm, Sonar, and Walker that are the working dogs at the minute. We have Bob, who’s dry Bob, he doesn’t go into the water. He does, he paddles. He will sit with people and he doesn’t swim. We’ve got Ralph the pup. He’s 12 months old on Monday. He is not actually swimming and working yet but what he’s doing is he’s running around the bankside, coming in and out the water, sitting with people. He’s learning the ropes as we all learn the ropes in new jobs. He’s learning the ropes by and socialize.
Then the person swims out with me, which again is part of what we’re doing. It’s not just swimming out with the dogs or anything. It’s you doing that little bit of exercise. You may not be used to it in a dry suit and a buoy. It’s quite hard swimming. It’s part of what we do. Then we have a chat when we get there and the dog comes out, they swim out and this is all just to show people what the dog’s powers are and then hang onto the dog, buy his harness and then the dog just takes them back to shore.
Now they don’t have to swim or anything. The dog’s just pulling them. You can see that confidence building up. I’m out in the water watching the group. When that dog, whether it be Storm, Sonar, Walker, is taking them back shore, it’s their dog. Storm has rescued me, this is my dog. You wait till you have a go, you can see it happening. Next person swims out to me. We send the dog out, which is a different dog, Sonar or Walker. That person becomes, that’s my dog. Then when we’ve done it the three times and the dogs have to come out again, they’re all talking about how it feels and that anxiety is lifting. The next swimmers is if somebody’s again, this is a real rescue maneuver that I’ve developed, is someone’s in the water if it was a real rescue, they’d have a t-shirt and jeans on.
Maybe do it slightly different. What I do is a swim out and I grab their left arm and hold that across the chest, their right arm because that’s potentially something that could punch me in the face. If it was a real rescue and someone’s panicking, I don’t need being punched, I’m there to help. I trap that between my legs. I’m in the water underneath them. I’ve got the left arm, the right arm, I trap between my legs so they can’t punch me with that. Then the head, I can just move that forward as I need it because I’ve got the spare right on. I don’t need to do that for this because everything’s calmed right down. I still do the maneuver because you imagine somebody who’s got a bit of anxiety PTSD, whatever, they’re feeling a bit vulnerable. It’s that holding them that close contact is–
Dr. Paula: Containing.
Peter: Absolutely. I’m talking to them and as we are going back to shore, I just stop talking. They’ve got the piece of the dog pulling them back, the noise of the dog pulling them back to shore and it just works. We do that for all six of them. The third one we do is this C spine mobilization maneuver. Again, it’s all calmed really right down. Show them, we give them a demo of what it’s all about. That’s quite moving really for some people.
We send them out, the three people go out so you got your two rescues and your person who’s the patient. We swim out with a dog. I swim out after them and get them all set up. They’re in that hold and I’ll ask the person, how do you feel? They say, “Secure.” The dog comes out, pulls them back to shore. I’ve had people in tears. I’ve had people asleep and they just say the feeling is weightlessness and as if it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters why they’re in that position. They’ve got two people in that cradle holding them. I had a lady a few weeks back, she came and she lost her son and her husband two years ago. She said when she got back to shore, it’s the first time she’s felt safe and secure in two years. That’s all because whatever we are doing–
Dr. Paula: It’s really powerful.
Peter: It’s whether the water’s full of magic dust or I don’t know and I can’t explain how it works because each individual has got their own story. The final swim we do is what we call the quiet swim. We swim out about 40-50 meters. The dogs have gone from pulling two of us, pulling three of us, and then we drop them down to the one for the quiet swim. There’s only four things that we do. The quiet swim, we swim out about 50 meters. I take the first person with me and I want everybody on the bank to be as quiet as they can because it’s called to quiet swim. All you can hear is the dog blowing through his nose as he’s swimming out to you. They’re just coming out to do what they do. It’s magical to see them working. They go round, dog goes round the back of me and I get the person to hold onto them. The lie on their back, head first going back towards the shore.
They’re facing the same way as the dog’s head. I’ll say, “Don’t open your eyes or do anything till somebody actually touches you on the back. Have that trust.” When they’re swimming out again, it’s that anxiety thing. They’re not really sure what to expect. It’s amazing when they hold onto that dog again some magic dust somewhere along the line. When they get back to shore, I have a lot of people in tears with that one. Everything around them is absolutely natural. I’ve seen them from when I’ve been out in the water hugging each other because it’s been that emotional for them. Amazing. Myself, I like coming back and they have to wake me up because I just go to sleep. Now, like I said before, I’m not a counselor, I’m not a therapist. All I’m doing is taking people away from everyday chores and modern society for a few hours and it seems to work.
Dr. Paula: Can I ask Pete about the work that you’ve done specifically with health professionals and frontline workers?
Peter: Last year, East Midlands Ambulance Service asked us to do some swims for the staff which we did. We did them through the summer. I do a lot of swims up in Yorkshire for Our Blue Light, which is a mental health charity for emergency and essential services. Again, it’s trying to get people to come sometimes and people are a bit unsure about but when they do come, they tell the others, “You need to come and have a go at this.”
Dr. Paula: It must be quite, such an experience of being on the other side of that being rescued themselves if your day job is about rescuing and saving people.
Peter: I think a lot of it is because when we are in green people think we’re unbreakable, we’re not. I have jobs that haunt me a little bit. I get emotional when I’m talking about some stuff because it’s talking about the dogs but there’s a couple of jobs that hurt. One was six kids murdered in a house.
Dr. Paula: Oh, God. I guess there’s just something about the weight of that and how people carry everything they’ve witnessed.
Peter: It’s having to live with it. I retire next week. That doesn’t leave me though, does it? It’s not just me, is it? It’s all them guys. I feel for the youngsters because I had a life before joining the ambulance service. I didn’t join until I was 38. I nearly drowned in the Vaal Dam when I was 21. That’s hard, that’s a little difficult to live with now and again. The youngsters are coming from being living at home. A few years ago they were at school, they’re going to university where everything’s pretty much laid on for them. Yeah they’re having to pay the money and that to do the courses. It’s not the real world and then to come out and all of a sudden is smashed in the face with reality. Not everything we see is gunshots and knifing and stuff and horrific trauma but it’s what you’re dealing with people and well, we see things that nobody should see really.
As I put it is when I’ve talked to military veterans that come swimming, they tell me about how they’re affected and it’s wham bang in about 10 years they’ve got PTSD. They’ve gone to done the training as a 16 to 18-year-old, gone out, gone out to Afghan, see the mates shot, blown up whatever. That’s a short bang and it’s got them. We don’t get that in ambulance service. We drip-fed it over the years, and it’s not necessarily the horrible things, it’s how we deal with grieving families and we have to be the rock, but how long can you be a rock for?
Dr. Paula: Yes. I’m curious Peter as well, thinking about you coming to the end of your ambulance career or approaching that, and what the health service has been through in the last few years particularly, and where it’s at right now. What your reflections are in terms of the impact that has on the staff?
Peter: Yes, I mean, years ago when I started in A&E, we’d probably do two jobs in a shift, in a night shift. I’ve not turned a wheel in the past. I’ve done two, you get a job at three in the morning. “Well, [laughs] started at 11, and you give me a job at three? It’s going to make me late off, but as time’s gone on, it’s got worse and worse for getting busier and busier now. That’s what we do for a living. It’s what our job is looking after people. Our job’s now not sitting on the back of an ambulance for 8 hours, 10 hours waiting at hospital, that’s not our job.
That’s then becomes a ward really, because and we are not nurses. We deal with stuff in the community, take them to hospitals to get mended. That has a massive effect on people, I think. I’m quite lucky in the fact I work on a response car. I work on my own, but I don’t have to go to the hospitals very often. I don’t know if I could still be in the job if I had to sit in the back of an ambulance for eight hours a day waiting. These kids are being brought up into that. Now, they’re not going to last, because who can last sitting eight hours with one patient? We’re not nurses. We’re trained for emergency care.
Dr. Paula: The pressures are different, but I guess it’s also something you touched on about that exposure to trauma that as you said is a constant drip feeding and you maybe get some of these really sticky experiences that stay with you forever, but there’s also an undercurrent of exposure to the really most horrific things that happen in peoples lives.
Peter: Yes, and you see in that. I say the one that hurts me a little bit is six kids murdered in the house. Whether I should say that or not, I don’t know, but yes. What them poor kids went through and that. It’s the only job, I’ve got to be honest, in 26 years of doing the job, it’s the only job that’s brought me to tears. It was tough. Now because of what I’m doing. A friend of mine in America, he runs Worldwide Peer Support. His name is Skip Ockomon. He was an alcoholic and he was addicted on drugs and things. He’s been clean now for 24 years. Now, he reached out to God, and Jesus and all that, and the religious side of things. I have a lot to do with them over there. We’re part of this Worldwide Peer Support with Peter and Newfoundlands. I’m not religious at all, but I reach out to the dogs I suppose. I suppose that’s my God. That’s what I reach out to.
Dr. Paula: Yes. I wanted to ask you what this has meant for you being involved in this work and the impact it’s had for you.
Peter: Mentally proud, very passionate.
Dr. Paula: I could hear them there agreeing with you. [laughs]
Peter: In lockdown, when we couldn’t do it, it made me realize actually how much I’ll miss it. Yes, I couldn’t help colleagues. I couldn’t help people that needed that bit of help with my pets. I couldn’t do it. It was a bit frustrating. Then when we got that green light to go and play for a few months before the second lockdown, realizing perhaps, actually this helps me quite a lot because it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders, helping people again and not just having a chat with them, and it was being able to get back in the water and seeing people’s happy, smiley faces and just doing something, what I wanted to do. We had quite a lot of swims in that short time. Then we started doing some work with the military veterans. Amazing. The results we got from that are incredible. These guys have been through it, we’ve been through it as well, but I’ve not had people shooting at me. I’ve not been dodging landmines and things and to be able to help these guys. That was like a pilot scheme. Then that’s took off. This year we’ve had six swims. One a month for the military veterans. Incredible.
Dr. Paula: Is your sense Peter, because I mean, it sounds, when you describe it, just an amazing experience that feels really good in the moment. It’s your sense or do you hear about that impact having a more lasting effect than just being a nice experience?
Peter: Oh, absolutely. All the staff that came with me from work last year, whenever I see them because I work on my own, I work in the county station. I don’t see that many unless people back me up and that, but when they do see me and they’d been swimming with the dogs, everybody asked how the boys are and they said, what a great day that was. Now a few weeks back, well a few months ago, a lady came, we did the first swim up in Yorkshire, Our Blue Light, a lady came along.
She works with kids with behavioral issues. She runs a group, in that she has to do exams and things. She’s quite a nervous wreck, bless her. [laughs] She’d tell you that, so, she get’s quite nervous for exams and the anxiety builds up because she’s got to go and answers down and things. I hate to take exams myself. Don’t like doing it. If I don’t have to do another one in my life, I won’t miss it. Anyway, she had to swim. She absolutely loved it. I was then told a couple of weeks later when she went for the exam, she had no anxiety at all. The last swim we did was probably a month ago.
No, about two, three weeks ago we did in Yorkshire. She came for another swim. I said, so how’s it been going then? She said, “I am still feeling the effects of the first swim.” She said, “I have not ever been so calm and relaxed as I have been since that swim.” What an amazing thing for somebody say to you. I said, “Well, what are you going to do with this one then?” She said, “I just want to see if it helps and tops up.” Anyway, after the swim on the second day, we had to swim. I said, “How did that feel.” She said, “Better than the first time.” She said, “I just feel so, so chilled.”
Dr. Paula: It sounds like it’s something that really can get into people’s nervous systems. It’s not talking it’s not thinking. It’s really straight to the core of us and if particularly people who have had really stressful work and exposure to trauma, often our nervous systems are really heightened and we have this baseline of fight-flight all the time, but this is an intervention that really just can calm that down in such a fundamental way that doesn’t need words. Yes, or thinking around it. Just really a very embodied theory.
Peter: Yes, because when people come for the swim, I never ask any questions. I don’t need to, and I don’t want to ask because I’m not a counselor. I’m not asking them about their life. I’m not going to give them answers. It’s not what I do. We just get people to turn up and have a swim. Everybody has their own reaction to it, but nearly everybody comes out with a bit of the same results. Like me being a paramedic compared to say, another paramedic. We’ll all do the job a different way, but we’ll all end up with the same result. It’s a bit like that swimming with the dogs. Some people stand there and look like they’re not enjoying it. You think, are they enjoying it or not? They all come out with that same, “Mate, that was amazing.”
Dr. Paula: I was just going to ask you, what the future holds for the dogs and you in this way.
Peter: We’ve always been funded by ourselves basically and we do charge for a swim but I want people to swim. I don’t charge a lot of money so I charge at the minute £25 ahead per swim, and that’s all the equipment and everything involved. Things might change next year a little bit because obviously, the cost of everything’s going up so it might have to change a bit more.
This year we won Hero Dog of the year across the Kennel Club Hero Dog of the Year for the work we’re doing. That all stems from that swim between the lockdowns and we did the pilot swim for Military Veterans and they put a press release out and BBC and ITV came. They came and filmed it. A lady from the Kennel Club watched it and seen it, sent them an email saying, do you want to nominate Pete and his dogs for Hero Dog of the Year?
Of course, it all went quiet didn’t it because of lockdown again so we didn’t hear anything for 12 months or whatever it was. Had an email from the Kennel Club saying, was I still interested in being put forward to Kennel Club Hero Dog of the Year. I go yes, why not? My whole theory in life is nothing ventured nothing gained. She rang me back a few days later and said you’ve got through to the final it’s like a judges panel that judges it.
We had to do a film. They came and filmed us about what we’re doing. You can find it on Pete Lewin Newfoundlands Google Page. I still shed a tear watching it even though it were me doing it. Then we went to London to the Kennel Club’s HQ for the launch of it and trying to not tell people about we’ve been put forward for this, incredible. Then we were given permission to put forward to it.
People all around the world were voting for us. Anyway, the guys that were also in it there’s four other people with their dogs in it. All got a magnificent story to tell. We all met up before we had to go into the arena and we all had a drink. I said, “Look, thank you for being and let the best man win.” Thinking, well, it ain’t going to be me because fire service dog guy who got a guide dog for the blind.
Then we went into the arena. God that was really moving and then we came out to talk to all of us individually. Then when Sarah Phillips she was in Bridget Jones’s diary I think she came and she had a bit of a chat and then she went off and opened the envelope and said, the winners are Pete and Bob. Amazing, so so so proud. It’s all from a bit of an accident really from not doing real rescue work thinking what we’re going to do and we’ve started this.
Dr. Paula: It does sound like real rescue work.
Peter: When people say that. If I was doing real rescue work I’d be doing a call-out once a month six weeks whatever. When I take six people swimming, that’s six people’s lives I’m changing.
[music]
Dr. Paula: Thank you for listening. If you enjoy this episode and you’d like to help support the podcast please do share it with others, post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. I’d love to connect with you so do come and find me on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can also sign up to my mailing list to keep up-to-date with future episodes and get useful psychology advice and tips straight tiering box. All the links are in show notes. Thanks again and until next time, take good care.
[music]
[00:44:51] [END OF AUDIO]
