Once a week on Tuesdays, Midnight, an adorable black/gray cocker spaniel mix prances her way into University Hospital. She is greeted by nearly everyone she meets. “Middie!” one woman exclaims.
“You’re gorgeous, baby doll,” another states as she walks hurriedly by.
Then, almost as an afterthought, while rubbing and scratching the dog’s belly, they might look up and say, “Oh yeah, hi Jose, how are you?”
Jose Woodhead and her dog Midnight, who goes by Middie, are visiting the hospital on Woodhead’s lunch hour. She works nearby as a researcher developing anti-epileptic drugs at the U’s Biomedical Polymers Research Building.
Middie wore a red kerchief around her neck, the standard uniform for Intermountain Therapy Animals (ITA). She lapped up the attention and praise of passers-by while Woodhead explained that she and Middie are one of more than 120 volunteer Pet Partner therapy animal teams.
Each Pet Partner team consists of a volunteer and his or her pet.
“It’s usually dogs, but we do have cats. We have rabbits, and we had a bird once,” Woodhead said.
She and Middie regularly work with Jodie Senior, a recreational therapist who has been at the hospital’s Rehabilitation Center for about five years. Senior knew practically nothing about animal-assisted therapy until three years ago when ITA volunteers began visiting the U hospital.
Senior met us in the hallway and invited us into a large room where we met Sally, Middie’s first patient. Sally had suffered numerous brain aneurisms and had been in the hospital since December.
Woodhead positioned Middie on a bench next to Sally. She explained that Middie was in need of grooming and asked if Sally would be interested in brushing her.
As the human side of the therapy team, Woodhead’s main duty is to keep her pet in control, ensuring the safety of the therapy patient and the dog. On this occasion, however, Woodhead did much more than that. She asked Senior whether one of Sally’s hands was weaker than the other and then encouraged Sally to use her weak hand in grooming Middie.
“[Animals] are really good because they motivate people,” Woodhead explained. She said that it is much easier for a physical therapy patient to use his or her fine motor skills to do something like feeding a dog a treat.
Just then a young teenager named Jolee joined us, walking in on crutches. Middie bounded over to greet Jolee with excited, slobbery dog kisses.
Sally didn’t seem to mind because she had been trying to dodge Middie’s attempts at licking her hands.
Senior noticed this and told me, “there have been times when Middie has known when someone has had a stroke. She knows which side has been affected. She finds the hands that don’t feel anything and licks life back into them.”
While Middie continued to lick Jolee, a conversation ensued about whether or not Sally liked dog kisses. That prompted Woodhead to ask, “do you have a dog, Sally?”
In a quiet voice, Sally replied yes, while her sister, who was sitting nearby, shook her head “no” and explained that Sally used to have bulldogs, but they got old and had to be put to sleep last year.
This fact gave Senior and Woodhead the opportunity to tap into Sally’s memory, another area where animal assisted therapy is helpful. Sally talked about how bulldogs have trouble breathing and how long ago they died. Her sister would nod if Sally was correct or she would help Sally remember.
In the meantime, Woodhead had pulled a sandwich bag full of cheerios out of a small black pack, suggesting that perhaps Middie would like a lowfat snack.
Sally took a few cheerios and pretended to eat them, never taking her mischievous eyes off of Middie who watched the cheerios intently.
“You’re a tease, Sally,” Woodhead laughed.
The next item to come out of Middie’s black bag was a small ball. Woodhead gave the ball to Sally and asked her to throw it to Middie who was by now sitting comfortably on Woodhead’s lap.
“She used to retrieve, but now she just got lazy,” Woodhead explained.
“Yeah,” Senior laughed, “usually Jose [Woodhead] and I just see how good of retrievers we are.”
However, with a little encouragement from Woodhead?she gently prodded Middie to move?and Sally’s soft command, “Go get it,” Middie did retrieve the ball a few times.
We said goodbye to Sally and made our way down the hall to the elevators that would take us to the fifth floor. On the way, Senior explained that as a therapist, once you figure out what a patient needs, you can use any number of modalities (games, crafts, computer, etc. used to get the results desired) to help them improve in that area. Animal-assisted therapy is one of those modalities.
For example, Senior illustrated how animal-assisted therapy can be used with patients who have suffered spinal cord injuries.
“You can gauge their progress,” she said, “One day they can’t even hold a ball, the next week they can hold it but not throw it, maybe the next week they can throw it with just a little force.”
On the fifth floor we visited Shirley who had a lung transplant a year ago. Due to complications, she has spent the past year in the hospital.
Middie often visits Shirley, breaking up an otherwise monotonous routine. That’s why these visits are called recreational therapy?they give patients a change of pace, Senior said.
“The reason we use dogs and cats [is that] animals have this bond with people. If you have a dog or a cat, you know how good you feel around them,” Woodhead explained.
That bond is a guiding principle for ITA volunteers and the exact reason Senior led us to the maternity ward on the second floor. She explained that with high-risk pregnancies, mothers must stay in bed, unable to really do anything until they have their baby. This can be especially difficult for women from distant towns or out of state who come to University Hospital because of its ability to care for severely premature babies.
Stephanie, a young mother from Salt Lake, was eating lunch when we arrived, but she happily put her sandwich aside to cuddle with Middie for a moment. Senior grabbed a clean towel to place over Stephanie’s knees, and then Woodhead gave the go-ahead for Middie to jump up on the bed. Stephanie roughed up Middie’s ears, but again, we didn’t stay long. Woodhead’s lunch hour was almost over.
“Hang in there another week,” Senior encouraged Stephanie as we made our way back out into the hallway.
On our way back to the Rehabilitation Center, passers by, especially therapists who know Middie, took notice of the black furball plodding happily along, sniffing every now and again at the floor.
“She does our vacuuming for us,” one woman commented.
“Having the dog here is almost as therapeutic for the therapists as it is the patients,” Senior said.
We were almost back to the Rehabilitation Center, and I thought Middie’s duties for the day were over. But she still had one more task to do. Coming toward us down the hall was a nurse who called out, “Jodie [Senior], we need some cheering up.”