A Stray Dog, an Angry Teen and a Path to Healing: New Book Explores Childhood Mental Health

Thirteen-year-old Jenna Connor has already been hospitalized, medicated and labeled a “psycho” by her classmates before Terence Rousseau’s new novel, Jenna Finds a Dog, even begins.

Rousseau crafts an inspiring tale that centers on a teenager’s experience with anger and the second chances that lead to her recovery.

Through anger management therapy, family upheaval, expulsion and peer conflicts, Jenna slowly learns to regulate emotions that for a time would spin her out of control. The journey back toward herself, however, is guided by an unlikely companion: a stray dog named Lucky who ends up teaching her how to heal and who reveals in Jenna an almost dog-whisperer quality that no one, including herself, saw coming.

Jenna’s instincts with Lucky begin with obedience and basic training, but soon their connection deepens into an attuned, mutually healing partnership. On a whim, she enters her companion into regional agility competitions and eventually the National Championships. What Jenna takes from their success has less to do with her dog and more to do with realizing what she is capable of. The story beautifully presents Jenna’s unfolding recovery through the focus, patience and self-control she manifests while training and competing with Lucky.

Jenna Finds a Dog is grounded in real clinical understanding of family trauma and childhood anger.

Weaving in descriptions of the hormonal shifts that occur during both stress and calm, the novel teaches readers about how nervous system regulation can help one cope when in crisis. Rousseau takes care in representing several modes of healing, from medication to group therapy, as well as the real-world consequences of destructive coping mechanisms and dysregulated anger, like expulsion from school, court hearings and probation.

Beyond the clinical background of the story, Rousseau, a practicing physician, presents a story full of hope and transformation, taking a well-rounded look at what childhood mental health recovery actually requires. Jenna’s progress comes from two very different sources: a teacher who shows her how to trust again and a dog who teaches her how to stay calm.

Jenna Finds a Dog views childhood anger as something to understand, not just manage or punish.

It’s an important story to have on hand for kids navigating similar mental health struggles.

This story was originally born as a screenplay, and Rousseau is advising audiences to keep watch for the film version in the not-too-distant future.

Jenna Finds A Dog

Publisher: Little Studio Films

ISBN-13: ‎979-8993059273

Available from https://www.amazon.com/Jenna-Finds-Dog-Terence-Rousseau/dp/B0GW5Q3542

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Terence Rousseau is a family medicine physician serving a remote mountain village in New Mexico. He writes in his spare time to relieve the stress of medicine, bringing an eclectic vision to his stories as diverse as his background. As a former English teacher, former seminarian, former soldier and former broadcast journalist (he shares a Peabody Award for his work with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service), he has studied everything from electronics engineering to church history. He even did a stint as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. When not working, he enjoys time with his wife and dogs exploring the backcountry of New Mexico, hitting the slopes and practicing Qi Gong.