A children’s hospital in Hollywood is growing its pack with a new therapy dog.
The new golden retriever puppy will join six current therapy dogs with Memorial Healthcare System in offering patients comfort, encouragement and love as part of their animal-assisted therapy program.
Tracy Meltzer, the administrative director of the program, said the dogs are used in a multitude of ways at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital. If a patient is undergoing a painful treatment, the dogs can serve as a distraction.
“It's very beneficial to have these types of out of the box therapies for the patients and their families,” she said.
Patients can brush, pet and play fetch with the dogs as part of their strengthening exercises in physical therapy. The retrievers can even be used for speech therapy.
“If somebody is trying to learn vocabulary words, we have them repeat the commands that the dog knows,” Meltzer said.
The hospital received a $500,000 endowment from the Craig Zinn Automotive Group to purchase the dog and hire a new handler.
Currently, all the handlers are volunteers who go through a training period to be able to take care of the dogs. The endowment will go towards hiring a full-time paid handler. This will be helpful since the volunteers have other full-time jobs, Meltzer said.
The retrievers come from Connecticut where they are bred. They also undergo a year and a half of training by the nonprofit Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities.
Lu Picard, the organization’s co-founder, said they have been working with the healthcare system for almost a decade.
Since Picard’s team breeds the dogs and watches them grow up, they can determine what dogs would be best suited for a hospital setting.
“If a dog is going to be working at a Joe DiMaggio Children's hospital where it's all kids, then you want a dog that doesn't care if you hug them, grab them,” she said.
When Picard brings the dog down from Connecticut, she spends a week with the handlers training them on the commands to use.
The new canine will join the other dogs sometime next year.
