move from person to person in the waiting room, inviting them to play. The clients simply loved her, but Umaya would ultimately prove capable of so much more. There was no design behind my discovery of Umaya’s gift. It was, you might say, serendipitous.

    For some time I had been working with a young woman named Mindy, who was in her 20s but looked younger. An incest survivor, Mindy had lived a life of which nightmares are made. Violent crimes always leave the survivor feeling insecure, but imagine what it must be like when the violence begins in infancy. Experiencing night after night of sexual abuse, Mindy never felt safe even in her own room. While it is often a male relative who carries out the abuse, that wasn’t the case here. Mindy’s abusers were her mother and her sister. A

mother is normally equated with nurturing, safety, protection and love, but the unthinkable had happened to Mindy as a child.

    It came as no surprise that Umaya was a gentle support during Mindy’s sessions. People often feel comfortable and safe with a dog and will talk in its presence when they are uncomfortable talking with another person. As Mindy opened up and began to reveal her childhood horrors, her stress level would naturally increase. And there would be Umaya, rapidly rubbing her tongue on the rug in response to the tension in the room, as if she were trying to get a bad taste out of her mouth. Mindy would look at Umaya and realize that Umaya was reflecting her own stress, that she was mirroring the uncomfortable feelings Mindy was releasing as a