WHO’S A GOOD THERAPIST?
Volunteer Diana Henry and her golden retriever Grace visit Colette Guitard and nurse Carmelina Baldassarre in the palliative care unit of the Royal Victoria Hospital. Grace is among a handful of therapy dogs who work with patients at the MUHC.
When they’re on the palliative care unit at the McGill University Health Centre’s Glen campus, where both are volunteers, Diana Henry takes her cues from Grace — her golden retriever.
They start at the door to a patient’s room, with Henry asking whether the patient likes dogs or wants a visit. If they get a yes, Grace heads directly to the bedside and places her head on the patient’s hand, or maybe licks it.
And in that moment, a path is cleared for a conversation between Henry and the patient.
“The dog is the facilitator,” said Margrit Meyer, coordinator of the MUHC’s pet therapy program. “The dog is like the catalyst to creating a connection to the patient. I tell the volunteer, ‘It is very important to let the dog make the connection and not to interfere’ — because the dog knows exactly how to do it.”
Grace, who is six, is a gentle, mellow creature with a sweet disposition. She wears her name well.
“Grace is a very calm dog who seeks people’s attention — but in a calm way,” Meyer said. “She just wants to be loved. And, even if you are not a dog person, you feel that — that ‘this is a dog I feel I can touch’.”
Grace and Henry visit the palliative care unit on the ninth floor of the Royal Victoria Hospital most Monday afternoons. For now, Grace is the only therapy dog there; there are 10 more therapy dogs elsewhere at the MUHC, mainly at the Montreal General Hospital. (A pet therapy program at the Montreal Children’s Hospital does not involve volunteers.)
And therapy dogs are found at other Montreal-area hospitals and in facilities including longterm care centres and seniors’ residences.
But at the MUHC there is a decided shortage of therapy dogs for the 10-bed palliative care unit at the Royal Victoria, the six-bed palliative care unit at Lachine Hospital and for other units as well.
A veterinarian by training, Meyer has an abiding interest in dog/ human interactions. She started the pet therapy program in 1997 at the request of the unit’s founder, palliative-care pioneer Dr. Balfour Mount. When the MUHC moved the unit to the Montreal General from the Royal Victoria in 2003, Meyer was asked to expand the program.
All MUHC volunteers receive a general orientation but the ones in palliative care, working under the auspices of Cedars CanSupport. have specialized training in visiting with patients nearing the end of life.
When Henry began to volunteer with Grace after retiring from a career in design a few years ago, she was nervous. “And then I had an ‘aha’ moment. ‘It’s not about you,’ I thought. ‘It’s about the patient’.”
A therapy dog ’s presence brings down the stress level for the patient, Meyer explained. “This is normal life coming to them. They just want to participate in that, if only for a moment . ... There’s a channelling of nervousness away from the patient.”
“It’s about the patients and making them feel loved,” said Rita Giulione, manager of volunteer services for the MUHC’s adult sites. “The dogs do it. That explains pet therapy — and that’s why we have dogs come in.”
As Grace snuggled up last Monday to Colette Guitard, a patient on the palliative care unit, Guitard described the heroic actions of a golden retriever she owned more than two decades ago: Buddy.
It was March, her son was 11 and he and two friends had contrived to scale the fence around the family’s backyard pool to test the thickness of the ice. Buddy saw what was happening and scratched furiously at the locked back door until Guitard heard it. She unlocked the door and came upon the scene.
“The dog saved my son’s life,” she said.
Henry asked: “Did you give him steak that night?”
“I gave him filet mignon,” Guitard replied.
Carmelina Baldassarre, a nurse in the Balfour Mount Palliative Care Unit, said: “It is amazing what pet therapy brings to patients. When they see a dog coming in they forget, for the moment, that they are sick.”
The dogs’ presence helps staff, too. “When doctors and nurses are overloaded, they sometimes say, ‘I just need a minute.’ They start petting a dog and you can just feel the tension deflate,” Meyer said. “Then they take a deep breath and say, ‘I’m fine.’ That often happens in the hallways — not only in palliative care but also in other departments.”
As Henry said: “Grace is such a comfort, lying there, being petted. It’s like she recognizes your kindness and wants to give some back.”
A woman on the unit was nearing death recently and family members seemed to find a measure of comfort in petting Grace’s silken coat as the dog lay quietly on the floor as classical music played quietly, and Henry chatted with them.
They recalled how, during Grace’s visit the previous week, the woman had asked that she climb up on the bed with her.
Their visit “kind of breaks the sadness spell for as many minutes as we are in the room,” Henry said.
Some weeks, she said, she feels she connects with patients in every room she and Grace enter during their two hours on the unit.
“Other days, people are sleeping or they say no to the dog. But I am never disappointed because I know that I tried. And if there is even one good visit, I am happy. I feel I am of service. Your life isn’t complete until you realize that you are put here for service. Here I have found my service.”
And in that service, there is such gentleness and kindness. Such grace.