A pooch is like therapy:

t all started about seven years ago when Zelda's owner and manager, Carol Gardner, of Portland, Ore., found herself, at 52, facing divorce, heaping debt, unemployment and two broken legs. Her divorce attorney, in an attempt to cheer her up, told her, "you need to get either a therapist or a dog."

The more she thought about it, the better the dog sounded, she says. She saw an ad for an English bulldog, who "was the mirror image of how I felt," she recalls. A puppy "who needed love, just like I did."