Animal Therapy
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Hilarious, Heroic, Human Dog
By Kelly A. Smith

You know, a dog can snap you out of any kind of bad mood that you're in faster than you can think of.
~Jill Abramson

On a Saturday morning, I phoned the fertility clinic to let them know we were stopping treatment. The receptionist was there seven days a week because ovulation waits for no man (or woman). Our most recent treatment had failed, and we couldn't handle the financial or emotional strain anymore.

The depression that followed shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. It enveloped me, knocking the wind out of me and making way for a new challenge: crippling anxiety. I became fearful of everything. If I had a twinge, I was sure I had cancer that would render us unable to adopt a child. I started having tingling and twitching in my arms and legs, and I couldn't sleep at night. As the women in my life conceived and gave birth to beautiful, healthy babies, I would sit on our front porch steps each night, crying and waiting for my husband to come home. (Keep reading)