At her side, (wo)man’s best friend

Molly MacFarlane Palmer’s mixed-breed dog, Harley, isn’t just a pet. She’s also a guardian that helps her owner avoid and recover from panic attacks.

Palmer adopted Harley, who she guesses is a beagle/bulldog cross, from the Greater Birmingham Humane Society last summer as a puppy after her former fiancé brought her home as a surprise. It didn’t take long for her to realize the benefits of having Harley around.

Each person experiences panic attacks differently, but for Palmer, they are a “non-reality.”

“It’s like being in one of Salvador Dali’s pictures,” she said. “A lot of people think they’re having a heart attack or something like that, but in fact they’re having a panic attack or an anxiety attack.”

While normally her panic attacks would occur only every few weeks, a car accident in June 2014 left Palmer with severe brain injuries and significantly more frequent panic attacks.

“The severity of [the attacks] was tenfold afterwards,” she said, adding that sometimes she would have as many as five a week. A few months after getting Harley, Palmer noticed she stopped feeling as anxious, and her panic attacks had decreased. It was clear Harley was more than just a pet. 

“Originally, she was supposed to be the family dog, and ... we were going to do a service dog later. But she was being so good and listening to me,” she said. “I’m stubborn, so I was like, ‘No this is going to happen.’”

Just as she enrolled 4-month-old Harley in an owner-assisted service dog program at Rover Chase, Palmer was grocery shopping when she began experiencing a panic attack. Without hesitation, Harley sat down in front of her and began barking to help distract her from the episode.

“That was the moment [I knew],” she said. “After that, it was like, this needs to happen.”

As a service dog, Harley will be trained to perform tasks to benefit an individual with a legal disability, which she learns from spending up to 10 hours a day, three days a week learning at Rover Chase. 

“I like to say that any dog can learn the skill set … but what’s difficult is to find a dog that really loves and wants to spend their whole life working for another person,” said Rover Chase’s Abigail Witthauer.

The connection between dog and owner helps, she said.

 “Harley is really well bonded to Molly,” Witthauer said. Right now the team at Rover Chase is working with Harley to help teach her tactical distraction, which involves initiating petting or playing with Palmer when she senses the early stages of a panic attack. 

“She can tell when I start shaking and breathing hard,” Palmer said. “She brings you back to reality.”

Since her accident, Palmer has recovered from and is able live life with fewer panic attacks with Harley by her side.

“She’s my fur baby,” Palmer said.

With her help, Palmer has overcome her difficulties and earned a degree in accounting from UAB, is working as a contract accountant and is raising her daughter.

“One of the only ways of doing that is having a great support system,” she said. “And Harley is a part of that support system.”