"Everything Dogtors"

On Auburn University’s campus, not all heroes walk on two feet. Sometimes, they come with four paws, a cold nose and a warm heart.

“They’ve got all the credentials,” said Dr. Doug Hankes, who heads up the university’s animal assisted therapy program, appropriately nicknamed the Dogtors.

That program plays an instrumental role in Auburn’s Student Counseling & Psychological Services (SCPS) – a department in student affairs serving as the primary mental health counseling center for undergraduate and graduate students.

SCPS’s four-legged team of Dogtors, including Dr. Rooster, Dr. Nessie, Dr. Eve and Dr. Winston, can often be found spreading joy to students across campus, rescuing them from the stress that often comes with college life.

“We currently have four Dogtors on staff,” said Hankes. “Three of them are retired detection dogs.”

In collaboration with SCPS, the Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine’s Canine Performance Sciences team re-trained the three dogs to become therapy dogs and donated them to SCPS.

Now retired from their days of sniffing out danger, the Dogtors have redirected their keen noses to providing comfort through group and individual therapy sessions with students.

“We call them our mental health ambassadors,” explained Hankes.

Hankes is finishing his 27th year on the Plains. He graduated from Auburn with his bachelor’s in physical education before heading to the University of Texas to complete his master’s in sports psychology. He completed his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of North Texas in 1996. After a stint at the University of Tennessee, Hankes returned to Auburn in 1998. For the past 20 years, Hankes has been the executive director of SCPS. He also serves as Auburn Athletics' executive director of counseling and sport psychology.

Hankes has seen firsthand the remarkable expansion of on-campus mental health services. Today, there are more than 30 mental health care professionals on staff at SCPS.

“How we've grown is just a tribute to our administrators who realized we need to take care of Auburn students and their mental health,” Hankes said.

With May marking Mental Health Awareness Month, Hankes and his team of Dogtors will be hitting the ground running. This month, they’ll kick off their Camp War Eagle Parent Run and Walk campus tours, welcoming hundreds of incoming freshmen parents. SCPS will continue hosting their Get Moov’in Walks twice weekly during Fall and Spring semesters. The Dogtors will also be on hand at many mental health awareness events throughout the year, promoting the benefits of good self-care.

For Hankes the most rewarding part of his and the Dogtors’ job is seeing students heal and thrive.

“It's the best job ever,” he said. “You get to see people change. You get to see people get better."

SCPS has two locations on campus: in the AU Medical Clinic and and in Haley Center. Students can walk-in any time and be seen. There is no charge for any of their services. Dogtors are at both locations, always ready to greet visitors with a firm tail-wag. 

If you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis, it's crucial to seek immediate help. Visit the SPCS website or call the counseling center at (334) 844-5123.

Check out our "Everything Auburn" Podcast website here!

Transcript

0:05

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Everything Auburn podcast. I'm your host, Dalton Odom, and I'm Carter. Welcome to another episode. Welcome back everybody. I'll be honest, Dalton. I just want to start just right into it here. Okay? I'm a crier. But let's be real honest, Dalton. We both are. And when we scheduled today mental health awareness month this month. So let's get something to go along with that, right. I've been real scared about today. Yeah. We have, staff meetings every week. And yesterday, we were telling everybody who we work with. Hey, we've got we're filming the podcast tomorrow. So excited. And then Carter and I were both like, hey, hope we don't cry. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed. We'll see how it goes. Yeah, exactly. And we've got a therapy dog here. So it's true. It's true. We do. Thank goodness, thank goodness we do. Because today we have the Executive Director of Student Counseling and Psychological Services and our Athletics Executive Director of Counseling and Sports Psychology, Dr. Doug Hankes. How are you doing? That's pretty impressive. Quite the quite the the job there. Yeah, quite. And and who is this we also have here with us. This is Doctor Rooster. He is one of our four therapy dogs. And he, drew the lucky straw to, come to the podcast and love it. Oh, is is this his first podcast? This is his first podcast. He heard paw cast and was, like, raised his paw and was ready, ready to roll. I love it. That's great. Well, welcome to it. We're glad you took some time out of your day to spend some time with us. Yeah, have a little chat. Looking forward to this is great. So you grew up in Auburn for the most part. Yeah. Okay. And then you attended Auburn. Correct. Did okay. Success in seven not finishing four. Hey, you know what? I like it. And if that ain't the truth, because I did it in five, and then I did two years of grad school, so that's okay. Seven. So customizing master right is not in math. Look, I'm a two time liberal arts grad. Everybody. We're we're good at communicating, not at math. Okay. Right. That's fine. But tell us a little bit about what all does student counseling psychological services offer. How did you get involved in this position? That sort of thing. Loaded question on a long story. This is, finishing up my 27th year, you know, went to Auburn as an undergraduate. Met my wife here. Really never thought that we we both never thought we'd ever come back. We were gone for almost 15 years, and just a random set of events. Coincidences happened, and, we ended up back here. That was 1998. The counseling center at that time was in the basement of before, and I don't know if you remember Foy back then, but we used to call it like a submarine. You could take your hand across the ceiling and the asbestos ceiling and just run across the love that you know what I'm talking about. And, you know, the running joke was when a student came in, if, you know, if they weren't sure they were depressed once they got into our offices. It was very depressing. So basically, typically confirmed it. All that to say is the department was born. All that to say, there was not a lot of emphasis on mental health at at Auburn at the time. So, you know, where we were, in 1998 with a four, I think, a four person staff for probably about 20,000 students. And how we've grown is just, you know, it's a tribute to our administrators and a lot of folks who've just finally, you know, realize we need to take care of Auburn students and their mental health. I want to mention, you know, it's a field that has in the last 10 or 15 years has really blown up. But I mean, starting it when you guys did, I can only imagine was pretty. Was it on the front end or is it kind of in par with I mean, I assume that's not something that was as prevalent then that it is now. I think I think back then we just did we we looked at I call our student body. I still call our student body shiny happy people. As you walk around, it looks like everybody has got got their stuff together. And we've, I usually the first 10 or 15 years here at Auburn, we spent more time destigmatizing or trying to destigmatizing mental health and seeking out services and resources when you needed them. I, I'd say that that is really changed. Now it's more about trying to figure out how to take care of as many students that request or, you know, want to be seen, for different. And again, when we say mental health, I think people still go, oh, you know, what is that? I mean, it's it's anything that's getting, getting in the way of you performing optimally. And so it can be, you know, somebody who is so depressed that they can't get out of bed, or it could be just adjustment to college or it could be a serious, serious mental illness. And we we really see it all at the counseling center. But yeah, yeah, I can I can only imagine what it's like day in the life. It's. I think it's the best job ever. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think a lot of us look at other people's jobs and go, I don't know how you do what you do, and I get that a lot. But you get to see people change. You get to see people get better. Particularly if you stay one place too. As long as I have, I have so many people who come back years and years and years later and, you know, we'll go, hey, you know, you said X, Y or Z, and, you know, it helped change my life or you helped save my life. So, that's. You mean that's a great job? Wow. Right. Yeah, yeah. And again, the therapy dogs, we got dogs. We have Dogtors Oh, yes. So that was with, you know, our research team, aka Kim, our producer. We see this Dogtors term all over your website. Is that a term you guys coined? Get a Dogtors. This is, Yeah. That's how creative we are to council. I like it. Yeah, I love this. So you have your two Dogtors is that we have right now? We have four Dogtors. Okay, okay. Three of our three of our dogs are retired detection dogs from canine performance Sciences with the vet school here on campus. And and one of them is personally owned by one of our counselors who, had, was trained there, there like training standards. And so once they have all been trained up, to, to to therapy lines of therapy, I forget what the accreditation agency is, but yeah, they're legit. They got they got the credentials. So, you know, Carter was just talking about maybe mental Health Awareness Month. And just for anybody who's listening, students, parents, whoever, what are some of the things that you guys are doing for Mental Health Awareness Month in May there, sir, you have anything going on? Is there any events or anything that y'all are doing, anything that you're highlighting here? We got a number of events. It's, for for a college setting. May is not a really good month to have the awareness because we got everybody is heading out of town, and then we've got a lot of incoming freshmen and parents who are not generally concerned about mental health. When they come to camp where you go, they're excited to come here. If there are any mental health issues, a lot of them are figuring they're going to leave them back in high school, and they're going to be flipping the page. So, you know, the the events, we don't do quite as many. We do so many throughout the year. I feel like, you know, we've got it covered. But yeah, we'll be we'll be out and about, but we're out and about a lot anyway, right. Yep. We did just mention it. So it does require the asking right. Camp War Eagle. It's everyone's first interaction as a as a college student with Auburn. Right. And you have a very special event that you do with I think it's I think it's special since I created it the it's special. The parent run as part of Camp War Eagle. So any of you coming to camp War Eagle parents especially, you know, bring your running shoes. Yes. Because you take it you go on a been an excursion with the parent. We get hot and sweaty. When did this how did you become how did you start this parent run? So when I came back to Auburn, camp where Eagle had just started, I think we're in like year 2 or 3 maybe. Mark Armstrong was the, relatively new director, and we had, I believe, bus or van tours, and there might have been a walking tour and I just said I was did a lot, a lot of running back then. I was pretty serious. And, I just said to, to Mark, I said, hey, if I offered like a three mile running tour campus, would you let me do that? And he just started laughing. It's like, yeah, man, sure. You know, you can do that, but you're going to be running by yourself. And so, that's how it started. He used to all be run out of the hotel and conference center, and we'd meet up there, early. And, you know, for the first few years, it might be just a handful. A good crowd was 15. But we know we never got shut out. And just over the years, it's grown. And then we've had a lot of other faculty and staff members who have pitched in. We have some folks that have been running now for 20 years that are part of the Auburn University, you know, faculty or staff. So it's it's grown a lot more, it's, you know, it's a ton of fun. The parents that do it love it. They think it's the best thing, you know, since sliced bread. But, you know, it's the big running joke there. Chris Landry with camp, where he will get up in front of the parents at the in the opening ceremony and, and and just mention and just remind everybody of the mandatory three mile run that will be occurring the next morning. There's a march. Right. And then, you know, all the parents are, like, groaning, like going, this is. But then there's, you know, there's the 50 to 100. We've had probably the biggest crowd, maybe 100 125. That's but you know, you just never know who's going to show up. But it is a lot of fun. Hey, you know, I can only imagine, you know, it's mental health, I mean, stressful, the parents sending the kids off to college, get some endorphins. You're going early morning, a little morning run. See? Campus, I like it. Sure. It's. Get a free T-shirt. Hey, what's not to like about that? The list of things I'll do for a free t shirt is is shockingly long. Yeah, that is shockingly long. Yeah. Another thing, though, I think it was very interesting, is my favorite question to ask people on the podcast. I ask it every interview I do is my favorite thing by far. Is, is how you got to Auburn? Now, I know a couple things you mentioned earlier. You kind of left. Never thought you'd be back. Found yourself. I'm in a similar situation, kind of a boomerang. Kurt Sasser in Auburn has coined this boomerang, term. I believe, with Auburn people. Yeah, but, it is our understanding you have quite the, interesting journey back to Auburn after having lived here, went to school here, left, and you found your way back through a bit of a fortuitous, afternoon. Is this the hot tub? This is a hot tub story is what I've heard. I heard it involves a hot tub. It does. So I was working at the University of Tennessee, and I had actually run the Chicago Marathon. The weekend prior to this. It was a small Southeastern college counseling center. Directors conference. And my director at the time was really, you know, she she was really trying to talk me into coming and going to this conference to share the driving responsibilities. And I was so beat up and I really, really, really did not want to to go to this conference. It was, Hot Springs, Arkansas. And so I eventually agreed to go and, got the hot springs, got checked in. And then basically the first thing I did was go buy a six pack of beer and head to the hot tub and just kind of like, chill out because I was just, again, so beat up. And as I'm sitting there sipping my beer, a gentleman gets in next to me and, we just strike up a conversation. And he was the director of the counseling center at Auburn at the time. And so we got to talking and he said, you know, we have a position open, you know, would you be interested? I said, I don't normally ask this right away, but how much does it pay? He told me. I laughed and said, no, no, thank you. That's like that. That's like a huge pay cut. I'm not interested. You know, I love Auburn, but not that much. And he said, well, why don't you just why don't you come down and you can use it as an excuse to visit your family? And I was like, oh, okay. And so, came down and interviewed and felt so badly for the counseling center staff at the time that about mid-morning I got out of interview, mode. Interview mode I didn't really clean up to. Right. So normally you go to an interview, you get the haircut you take for me, take the earrings out, get rid of the I mean, you know, I can look presentable and, and so I said, now I'm just going to be me. You know, I'm an Auburn grad, right? I'm going to Auburn, man. You know the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're going to get they're going to get they're going to get to see me. But I realized I was not going to come back. And so I spent most of it interviewing, just trying to advocate for the staff here and just say, hey, we're we're really we're we're really we're really, really behind. We we got to do better as an alum. I'm frankly embarrassed. And so I was not I didn't go over real well during the interview. And my wife at it when I got back, my wife had applied for a job over in alumni affairs as a communications director. And, they offered her a job immediately and then, yeah. Then they sat on they sat on me for about six months before, I think. I don't think they could find anybody else sure about this guy. And pretty much pretty much the harshest thing, though, was a couple years ago, we were, I was cleaning out a lot of files, and I stumbled onto my, like, the files that had all my interview materials in there. And and there was one, you know, to get the written comments. And he said, not in Auburn, man. And I was just like, I was like, dagger to the heart. So gosh. But different. Yeah. No. So it all worked out right. But it didn't work out. But I mean, you are now. Yeah, I think you're I mean, you always are, but definitely say it now. Yeah. For sure. For sure. Yeah, yeah. Who would have guessed. Hot tub in Arkansas I mean back in 98. I mean people, you know, people really, really wanted to come back this boomerang thing. And, you know, you couldn't it was hard to get hired at the university. And for a married couple, or somebody was partnered up for both people to get a job at the same time, was was almost unheard of. And people asked us all, how did you guys do this? And it's like, you know, we really we're not trying to come back, you know? So I don't, you know, I don't, you know, I don't have you don't have any advice for, you know, it's kind of like it's supposed to have it's supposed to happen. It's supposed to happen. But yeah, this one thing, when I left the first time, I had to come to terms with the fact that it's not I'm not going to be back. Yeah. It's just because there's only so many people who do this job who work in university, and they're really good and they're great jobs, so they don't open up very often. Right? Right. So I fully expected when I left that I was saying goodbye for forever. Never thought I'd end up back, but here I am. Yeah, yeah. And it's so great that I am. Yeah, yeah. It's always interesting hearing so I haven't been graduated that long and I hearing from friends, you know I'm what is it, three years removed from graduating and I there's still people who've been like, I have not been back since graduation and it it hurts, but they're like, I live in Chicago. Like, how am I going to. Yeah. I can't just drive down, you know. So it's a get me eliminated any day of the week. It's a sobering thought, you know. Certainly is. But I did want to, you know, as you know, trying to keep an eye on my time here. I can only imagine how rewarding it is. I mean, you get to interact with students every day. I feel comfortable saying that every day. This. I mean, college, I mean, right, it's you get to really get such a great touch of the university, you know, you know, where the and you get the. I mean, the best part about the university is, is the students. I need to hang out with, student talk to students. Maybe not at their happiest time, but you kind of come help them get through it. It's got to be so rewarding to be. I think it's all the time, I think still, I mean, I still think working in higher education is the best, the best job there is, at least for me. As a psychologist, you get to do so many different things. You know, you could go out in private practice or go work in a lot of other organized systems and make a lot more money. But the, you know, the people, the students, you get to interact with, the faculty, the staff you can be involved in research, you get to go out and and do podcasts. I mean, you get to start a, you know, a therapy dog program. You get involved in graduate student training. I mean, they're just you get such a mix of things. It's it's super rewarding for sure. Right. And you also get to do a lot, not only with just general population students, but you do a lot with Auburn athletics. Yeah, most of my background was in sports psychology. I'm a licensed psychologist. My my undergraduate master's degree is in sports psychology within kinesiology. So it's all focused on performance enhancement. So I just again randomly a lot of me I try not to get up on the mountain top and provide this wisdom sort of thing. But the one thing I will say is the power chance events and just like again, being in a hot tub drinking a beer. But, I wish I could tell you was well planned out. Making the move from kinesiology is psychology, and that was random. And that with that altered my career. And just, you know, what I've done with my life. So, so, yeah, when I came back to Auburn, I was lucky to, get started. At the time, the swimming and diving program was doing really good. Jeff Schaffer was the diving coach, and he was the first coach who he was just like, hey, you do whatever you want to do with my dry diver sports psychology wise. And he's a great coach. And they started doing well. And David Marsh was the swimming coach and he was like, why isn't Doug working with the entire swimming team? And so I got to work with that entire team and a lot of those individuals and kind of got to ride their coattails. I call basking in reflected glory. You got to be a part of our national championship teams and then you're around enough. I mean, and other coaches are like, well, who's that guy? And you know, and, you know, next thing I know, I was doing a lot of again, I'm in the counseling center all this is just extra because I love doing it. And really trying to convince the powers to be in athletics. I mean, as we could get out in front of this and have we're there are going to be embedded clinical sports psychologist and athletic departments. It is going to be part of sports medicine, just like athletic training, strength and conditioning. We can either do this now or we can, you know, we can wait until everybody else does it. We didn't quite wait till everybody else did it. That's gone. But yeah, eventually, they decided they wanted to go that route and then asked, did I want to do that? And I was like ten years ago. It was my dream job. There's no way I'm going to leave the counseling center. What we're trying to build right now. But about 4 or 5 years ago, I was asked to step back in, and, we had some unexpected turnover, and I think the thought was if I came in, I could attract some folks that would maybe stay. And so I've got, I mean, I've got an amazing staff in the counseling center, and I got an amazing staff over in counseling, sports psychology. So, been been really, really lucky again with the people I've got to work with. And none of that would have happened if you weren't working in higher ed. He was saying. Never would have. And hot tub and hot tub never discount a hot tub. I'm telling you, it's certainly, sports psychology is especially something that I, you know, a big sports guy. And you can't watch sports now without hearing someone, an athlete get up on camera, talk about how they've done some sports psychology and worked with mental training. Yep, almost as much as physical training. And I feel like five years ago, six years ago, it wasn't as, maybe stigmatized and open. It happened. You don't hear about it as much now. You can't hear. I mean, everyone's got their own personal person they work with. And, you know, it's so much more present, especially in sports. In athletics, it's so much more prevalent. It was. Yeah, absolutely. Years ago. Yeah, absolutely. And again you've you've got the performance aspect. And then you have athletes who deal with mental health issues and personal issues too. And it's I mean, for athletes all intertwined. I mean, you know, if something's going on in your personal life that it's a lot of time is going to negatively impact your performance and vice versa. You know, I'm a baseball player and I'm in a slump. It's hard to, you know, leave that at the field and not maybe take it out on my partner, you know? And anyway, so yeah, it's what's really cool about working with athletes too, is a lot of times with the work you do in the counseling center with students who may or may not actually get to see all the changes. But when you're working in athletes with particularly performance specific related stuff, you can see whether they perform better or not, right? I mean, it's it's pretty clear. And they're coming back in and giving you immediate feedback about, hey, you know, we talked about this and I've been practicing it took it out there. And man, it made you know, it made a difference. So that's that's a ton of fun. So I would be remiss to ask we have the one and only Doctor Brewster here. Right. So I was just hoping that you could or Brewster, if you'd like to chime in, provide any self-care tips for anybody. That's listening. And then really just around it out, if there's somebody out there who is struggling and listening, what can they do? Who can they contact, where can they go? You can see he's pretty good at relaxing. I do see that snoring over there in the corner. And he's, he's and he's also pointing out the importance of like anyway self-care and taking care of your mental health is pretty boring to be honest. It's I call them grannies a lot of the things basic that if we would just do them on a consistent, probably daily basis, we could avoid a lot of these issues. But, you know, your grandma is going to ask, are you are you eating right? And, you know, are you getting enough sleep? You know, you're taking care of that aspect of your life, you know, how are you eating? You know, how's your how's your diet? Are you getting enough exercise? Are you spending time, you know, socially, you know, with your friends and making those connections, which can also be a problem for some students, right? Too much of that, but but a lot of those things go a long way if you can do them consistently. You know, the problem is, particularly college students is doing them consistently because a lot of their life is is not, you know, consistent. Because, again, there's so many things that do you don't want to miss out on. Right? Right. So you cut corners in a lot of ways. And sometimes you can get away with that for a long time. And then sometimes it can catch up to you. And particularly if you're more prone, if you know your family history, if you're more prone to anxiety or depressive related sort of things, you know, as long as your stress level is good, you might not see any of that. But once the stress level gets amped up, it's like a pot of spaghetti. Just kind of, you know, everything's good at simmering, and then you turn up the stress and then you got spaghetti sauce going everywhere. So again, self-care super important. You can overdo that too, right? You haven't got any money and you're going to go get your nails done. That's not self-care. I mean, that's, that's that's that's that's causing stress. Really? Yeah. Reminding students to sometimes they forget these things and it can and again, it's boring. Right. But if you're consistent with it, it goes a long way. But it works. It goes a long ways. Yeah. The counseling center, you know, how do you get connected? So you can, you know, we're in two locations. We're at the second floor of the medical clinic, and we're also on the ground floor of Haley Center underneath Auburn University bookstore. You can walk in, you know, any time and be seen. We've got somebody on call. You know, we hopefully we we save most of those times for crisis, an emergency. We also let students define what the crisis or emergency is. Or you can just call the counseling center number (334) 844-5123 and get scheduled for an intake appointment. For non-emergency intake appointments, we can generally get students in even at the busiest times of the semester, you know, between a week and two. And if it's a crisis, an emergency, you're going to be scheduled same day. So, yeah, we make we try to keep the barriers as low as possible for our students. We don't charge for any of our services. Again, it's I think it's our administration. And folks recognize how important this is. The dogs. We have dogs at both locations. A lot of people will just come in to the waiting area to just kind of hang out with the dogs. And, you know, we do a lot of outreach events with them. They do do a lot of group and individual therapy. So they actually are in sessions with students. But probably their biggest impact, on our student body is, the outreach events that they do, we call them our, you know, our mental health ambassadors. So we could do a tabling of that on the concourse of it says Student Counseling Psychological Services. And you see a bunch of, you know, licensed mental health professionals. It's almost like, see elections. You just go the other way, right? You don't want to be, you know, like, I'm gonna get psychoanalyzed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not going to. Yeah, I'm not going to go walk up to the table because, you know, then again, identified myself as somebody with. But if you got to, you know, if you have the dogs out there, they're, you know, people are going to absolutely come up and interact with dogs. And, and sometimes, you know, that makes a difference to them. Accessing services as well. So but yeah, they make a I can't imagine not having dogs in the counseling center. Yeah. So we've got, you know, one of these days I'm going to retire and we've got something set up. I know Doctor Woodard and Student Affairs is basically said, you can retire, but the dog program's got to keep going. Yeah. So, they're definitely going to be going to be part of the counseling center, ongoing. But. Yeah. Incredible. Well, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for spending time. Thank you for setting up this program, doing all so much work. You, your team, your dogtors, do so much great work for so many students. I know it's a service I utilized while I was a student, and I'm so thankful that I was able to, And it's really incredible work. But no, I love talking about it. But, I mean, again, there's been so many people other I mean, that have contributed to it. It's just it's it has not been me. I just happen to have been around for all of it. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you and your team have been able to do so much great work because it is appreciate it. It is a it is a very big need. And I'm sure you've helped so many students and you will continue to help so many students. That's the plan. That is the plan. Well, thank you so much for spending your afternoon here with us. And spending some time. My name is Carter, I'm Dalton, that's Dalton, and I'm Doctor Doug. Doctor Doug and doctor rooster. Thank you. And thank you for listening. We'll be back again next month with another member of the Auburn family sitting right over here in that fancy chair, and getting to hear the Auburn story and getting to hear learn a little bit more about them and what they do. Excited to see you then. If you'd like what we hear, like we hear, we want to hear more. We get more episodes. We get like 8 or 9 of them we've done the last few months and some awesome ones. Wherever you're listening to us now, just go backwards and there's more. And we'll see you again next time. Thanks. War Eagle. War Eagle. War Damn.