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Jump to navigationJump to searchDog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me From Myself by Julie Barton (view source)
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It was 1996 and Julie Barton was twenty-two years old and one year into her job in publishing in New York when she collapsed on the kitchen floor of her apartment in Manhattan. She was severely depressed, an illness provoked, on the face of it, but by the end of a destructive romantic relationship - or was it the end? Will kept coming back, in the early hours of the morning, sleeping with her, then leaving again. When Julie collapsed all she could think to do was to ring her mother who drove from Ohio to New York and took her home. Despite the best intentions of her parents and therapists, Julie seemed unable to break out of the depression, until she finally made just one positive decision - to adopt a Golden Retriever puppy whom she called Bunker Hill.
What did emerge from therapy was that Julie's depression didn't begin with the dysfunctional relationship with Will: he was really a symptom. The problems went back to her childhood went her relationship with her brother went beyond sibling rivalry and was squarely in the realms of abuse, both physical and mental. Her mother would hide under the bed rather than try and deal with it and her father, although affectionate, was rarely at home. Julie grew up expecting to be badly treated and even sought out relationships in which it was obvious that this would happen.
