The story below is a preview 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.
Taylor Reschka
Marshall is a star at his Carilion and retirement community visits, sharing love to all.
"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.
Taylor Reschka
Marshall’s visits brighten employees’ days, too, not just patients!
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."
Taylor Reschka
Marshall with his owner Marsha Jones.
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!”
Want to learn more about some of our region's therapy pets, including Ragnar, Oakey's Grief Therapy Dog? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our March/April 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!