A Dr. Phil for Pets
Maximus, a blue-nose pit bull, won’t stop “piddling” inside and his owner doesn’t know why. To Sue Griffin the answer is clear: Maximus is incontinent because he’s discontent.
“He’s peeing because he’s pissed,” Griffin tells the owner firmly. She wants to make it clear that the owner should not disregard her knowledge on this, or any, topic.
Griffin is something of a pet prophetess.
“It’s almost more a ministry than a job,” Griffin says of her 21-year-old retail and pet grooming business, The Clip Joint, on the corner of 37th Street North and Fifth Avenue.
Griffin is, in fact, an ordained minister who spreads the good word of healthy pet nutrition, holistic healing and meaningful pet-owner relationships.
With the phone book as witness, holistic practitioners, for people and animals alike, abound in St. Petersburg. But Griffin still stands apart from the rest. While grooming 20 to 30 dogs a day brings in cash, she provides what she sees as the more important service on a free, or “love offering" basis, as co-owner Diane Deubler calls it. Griffin’s mission is to help people think more like their pets.
While conventional animal medicine targets such symptoms as hyper-activity and aggression with medication or behavior modification exercises, Griffin maintains that any physical symptom displayed by a dog is the result of the owner’s stress or emotional problems. Excessive scratching could be the result of an owner’s strained relationship, constant accidents in the house a result of financial stress. To change the dog, Griffin says, you have to change the owner.
“We’re as much about the people as we are about the pets,” Griffin says. “So people come in and think they’re here for the dog and eventually we find out why they’re really here. It’s not about the dog. It’s about them.”
To transform owners, Griffin, also a certified hypnotherapist, takes them through what she calls Pet Energy Therapy, a guided relaxation exercise during which the owner and the animal are put under hypnosis.
“It just takes the person and the pet on a very relaxing trip,” Griffin says. The exercise involves visualizing a meadow or a stream, anywhere the subject feels at peace. This process helps owners channel energy back where it belongs. Owners may have misdirected their energy toward problems or concerns; Griffin helps it flow back into their pets, restoring the energy those pets gave to help their owners cope.
“Pets act as unconditional love,” Griffin says, “which is the love of God, the energy of the universe. It’s a spiritual relationship.”
Dee Glowa, a three-year patron of The Clip Joint, says she has benefited several times from Griffin’s non-traditional methods. Her 5-year-old shih tzu-yorkie terrier mix Murphy, for example, had a beautiful coat, until Glowa hit a rough patch in a relationship. Then Murphy started scratching incessantly. When she became “edgy and irritable,” Griffin, who grooms Murphy every Monday, knew it was time to talk to Glowa about what was going on.
“She sees people through their animals,” Glowa says. “Sue has helped me a great deal through different trials and tribulations in my life.”
Griffin doesn’t read palms or paws; she reads people and pets. Does it work? Griffin knows not everyone thinks so. She says one vet called her a “witch doctor,” which she took as a compliment.
Other vets disagree. According to Dr. John Meade, a staff veterinarian at the St. Petersburg Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, pets often mimic the behavior of their owners, just as couples who have been married for a long time adopt similar patterns and characteristics. Meade agrees the emotional instability of an owner could contribute to a canine conundrum.
“I have no doubt in my mind that animals can pick up on some emotions or states of mind,” Meade says. “They have a tremendous ability to pick up on things.”
Meade also says, however, there is no purely scientific explanation for this phenomenon and warns against completely discounting the genetic blueprint of any animal. He says the stress an owner feels can be one aspect of a pet’s behavior, though not necessarily the only or dominant one.
Meade himself uses alternative methods, such as acupuncture, in his practice at the shelter. He says it can be potent medicine and shouldn’t be dismissed as primitive. Meade says that attitude would invalidate all kinds of medicine.
“To be dismissive and say it’s primitive medicine -- what we’ve created today was built on primitive medicine,” Meade says.
Dr. Pam Epperson, a veterinarian with a private practice in West Bountiful, Utah, has also seen pets act out for no apparent medical reason. She says holistic methods have their place as a complement to traditional Western medicine. She cautions, however, against trusting anyone without the proper training. Griffin, for example, has a minor in animal behavior, but is not a trained veterinarian.
“People would be wise to make sure their holistic practitioner is truly a practitioner,” Epperson says.
As for Griffin’s hypnotic methods, Epperson is hesitant but open.
“This is a really tough thing to prove or disprove,” she says. “But as a vet, from my standpoint, if it makes the animals feel good and it makes the owners feel good and the owners are willing to pay for it, no harm done.”
