A Helping Paw

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The story below is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you! 

From hospitals to funeral homes, therapy dogs offer emotional support, education and more.

"It takes a long time to get anywhere with Marshall!” laughs Julie Blanchard, volunteer manager for Carilion, while boarding the elevator.

Here she refers not to his speed, though at 180 pounds, his pace is understandably less swift than deliberate, but to the obstacles in the form of Carilion employees and visitors that present themselves on the 10-yard walk from the windows to the elevator. 

With Marshall’s four-person entourage complete with press and handler, and dozens of people coming up to meet him, you might mistake him for a rock star if he weren’t a Great Dane. 

His owner, Marsha Jones, sees him similarly. “Marshall is the star. I just hold the leash,” she says while smiling wide, though no one could doubt her passion for the work. Besides their twice-weekly Carilion visits, the two also frequent retirement homes to cheer the residents, a task for which Marshall is exceptionally well-equipped.

The long-eared loveable pup with a head bigger than his owner’s resembles a darker, floppier Scooby Doo though he lacks that cartoon pup’s fearfulness. 

At less than two years old, Marshall has been working for most of his life, providing comfort in the places humans shy away from. But he didn’t get there on his own. Jones put him through the Therapets training program partly as a result of her own experiences. 

Almost 30 years ago, her nine-year-old son was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome. Jones was spending a lot of time in pediatric wards, and during this trying period, nothing brightened her son’s day more than when a therapy dog visited. 

Now that her son is grown and living independently, she is “paying it forward” with Marshall. 

A woman approached Jones in the lobby to request she visit her niece upstairs. Once there, the niece asks Jones if he’s up for adoption. Jones (very kindly) tells her no, and her aunt asks her to imagine how he’d get along with her little dog if she took Marshall home – and that’s part of the point of the program. 

Pet Pals not only cheers up the patients. It brings a sense of normality to the kids there. Dogs make the hospital feel a little more like home. 

Marshall’s next visitor is a little girl who wraps her arms around his neck while her brothers all wait in line to meet him. His only mild hiccup is focusing on the patient, especially when there are many other kids and food around. 

Jones shares, “He gets better with every time. He’s still so young and has a lot to learn.”

Though we could all learn a bit from Marshall too!

Carilion employees are as excited to see him as the patients. “Everyone brightened,” says Heather Jones, who was working her shift when Marshall arrived. “The staff, patients, people walking up and down the hallway changed."

Marsha Jones agrees. “The employees get so much out of this.” She shares that it usually takes her twenty to thirty minutes to get out of the hospital because of all the people wanting to meet him on his way out.

Blanchard added that Pet Pals teams visit “units or departments who may be going through a really difficult time. A visit from Pet Pals on the unit immediately makes a big difference, even if staff spend just a few seconds petting a dog.

”Every one of the 24 human pet teams in the Pet Pals program goes through training with Therapets of Roanoke. Therapets is one of many such nonprofits across the country partnered with Pet Partners of America, the national organization devoted to training and certifying therapy dogs.  

Not only do they train the dogs and their handlers. They also set up guidelines for visits.

For example, no visit may last longer than two hours. Those rules are put in place to reduce stress on the dogs. Though Marshall clearly enjoys the work, he needs a rest after it’s over. A lot is happening around him. 

President of Therapets Ellen Harvey calls it “an honor to participate.”

She began volunteering with Therapets in 2010 with her dog Halo. She loved it so much that she stayed with it and now continues volunteering with her current dog Sheena, an American Black Lab. Eventually, Harvey took on her current leadership role. “It’s about education and bringing happiness to people. The mission is to improve human health through animal-assisted intervention.”

The Carilion visits are only one aspect of their work. 

Sheena and Harvey’s focus is education. They visit libraries and help to calm children who are learning to read. Having a non-judgemental listener in the form of a friendly dog can be the difference between whether a kid gives up or keeps trying. 

Harvey describes one incident with a child facing learning difficulties and how rewarding “the joy on that child’s face” was as well as the “twinkle in the parent’s eye.”

“The joy goes right down the leash to me!”

Team Sheena also does conservation work. Sheena runs through the woods, and her strong sense of smell helps to catalog the animal populations there.

Therapets participate in many other programs, including “Stressbusters” for college students, where they get to enjoy a day with dogs during exam week, and vaccine clinics where dogs help to calm the children getting their shots.

Of course, not every therapy dog goes through Therapets.

Sam Oakey, IV, went the independent route, when certifying his dog Ragnar, an English Golden Retriever, as a Grief Therapy Dog to work at Oakey’s chapels and funeral homes.

Oakey got Ragnar when he was going through mortuary school in Nashville. They were best friends right away, but soon Oakey was worried about his new ward.

Even as a puppy, Ragnar was very calm, so much so that Oakey thought he might have a health problem. At two, he took him to Virginia Tech to get him checked. The vet’s diagnosis was that Ragnar is “an old soul.”

Wanting to have his buddy around at work all day, Oakey decided to get Ragar certified as a therapy dog.

On this casual day, in between official duties, Ragnar spends his time walking around the office, visiting his work friends, not unlike a human employee during a less busy time.

He politely requests that Oakey open the door so he can run and catch up to his buddy Kenny while he does housekeeping. It’s all part of his daily routine.

But when he needs to be, Ragnar is all business. Even during a casual chat at the office, a subtle shift in mood brings him from one side of the room to the other to comfort someone remembering a friend who passed. This is not a funeral. It’s just a conversation. There are no tears or cracks in anyone’s voice. Ragnar is just that exquisitely emotionally attuned.

Oakey says, “In a room of 10-15, he goes to the deepest griever” and “connects with people when others can’t.” Ragnar is available for all aspects of a family’s grief journey, from initial conversation to viewing and funeral.

There are countless examples of times when he’s made a difference. For example, at his first service, a young girl with epilepsy lay with him during the entire funeral and staved off seizures – something her family thought impossible.

Another time a blind and deaf man lost his brother. When he was rolled in in his wheelchair, Ragnar put his head in his lap, and the man was touched. He put his hand on Ragnar’s head, and his demeanor eased as he felt the connection.

Oakey carefully balances Ragnar’s busy schedule with plenty of downtime and recreation, such as hikes and simple hangouts. He can get overwhelmed and tired at the end of an emotionally taxing day.

It’s reassuring to see that the people who care for these selfless dogs who care for us put the effort in to make sure the dogs, too, are getting what they need.

There are working dogs all over Roanoke and across the country. Therapy dogs are just one piece of that puzzle. And lucky for them and us, unlike service dogs, when you see one, you’re allowed to pet them. You could call it a perk of the job.

But maybe more for us than them.

The story above is from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!