Angel on a Leash (9 page)

As we were adding facilities, it became evident that Angel should become its own organization. With Westminster's continued support, Angel On A Leash became its own 501(c)(3) charity. Famous New York landlord Newmark Knight Frank contributed office space for us in the Theatre District, and we went to work.

We had a huge reach because of our media exposure, and the phone was ringing every day with people who wanted to become Angel On A Leash therapy dog teams with their dogs in their hometowns. It is difficult, at best, to service individuals in hundreds of cities nationwide, so we decided that our emphasis would be on partnering with facilities to help them create or maintain therapy dog programs shaped by our own distinctive influence and focus. We created a mission statement:

Angel On A Leash champions working with therapy dogs in health care facilities, schools,
rehabilitation, hospice, extended care, correctional facilities, and crisis intervention. Through advocacy, education, research, and service, Angel On A Leash promotes the role of the human-canine bond in enhancing human health and quality of life.

From our mission statement, we created the following description of our philosophy, our Margin of Excellence, which helps make Angel On A Leash unique in the field of therapy dogs and animal-assisted interactions:

•  Working with facilities to create and support a therapy dog program unique to that facility; a program that meets the needs of its clients and patients; training teams, monitoring their effectiveness, and providing continuing counsel;

•  Training the human partner of the team, who drives the experience and must be the guiding hand for the team; preparing them for that experience with our enhanced standards of practice;

•  Protecting the dogs as they work, emphasizing that the safety and health of the dog is the top priority for the handler, who must be the constant advocate and protector of the dog;

•  Supporting research on the effect of our work on the health and well-being of patients, clients, family, staff, and the volunteers themselves, and the effect of that work on the health of the dogs.

Our guiding principles are constantly being developed and evaluated by Angel On A Leash in association with our partners, which provides a perspective that enhances relationships while helping us build effective and successful programs.

While we weren't able to handle individuals, we still wanted people to get involved with their dogs, wherever they might be. That is our mission, after all—to promote the practice. So we decided to coordinate our program with Delta Society's Pet Partner program, which had about 10,000 individual teams around the country as well as many instructors and evaluators. We would refer inquiring individuals to Delta, where they could get into the therapy dog world. We might not have had an Angel On A Leash partner facility for them in their area, but that was not as important to us as getting the dogs and their humans volunteering and helping people in need.

I am a past board member of and PR consultant for Delta Society, and all of my dogs have been registered with the organization. A number of our Angel board members—including my mentor, Christi Dudzik—have been involved with Delta as well. We are all full believers in what Delta does and how they do it. So we have the best of all worlds—our own perspective and philosophy on the importance of therapy dogs for the facilities, and Delta's teaching programs and registration for the individual teams.

When Angel On A Leash was expanding into Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon, I went out there for a press event. My longtime friend, Tom Lasley, an executive at the hospital and a board member of Angel On A Leash, hosted the conference with doctors, pediatric patients, and hospital officials in attendance. Tom brought his wonderful yellow Labrador, Alain, a therapy dog who visits at the hospital, to help us with the “photo opps” for the TV crews and photographers who were there.

After the press conference, the three TV crews followed us upstairs to the cardiac unit to visit a patient, Mr. Ebey. He had been at the hospital for several weeks, recovering from a crisis during open-heart surgery. Alain and Tom had been visiting him for a couple of weeks already, and on this day, we were doing it for the TV crews, to show them what therapy dog visits were like.

Tom told me that this had been a special day for Mr. Ebey, as his endotracheal breathing tube had just been removed and he was breathing on his own. He was sitting up in a chair and seemed quite happy to see Alain, smiling and petting him. After we had been there for a few minutes and the camera crews had gotten their shots, I suggested that we all step out of the room for a break, so as not to get Mr. Ebey too worked up. We retreated out into the hallway; the TV crews, with their task accomplished, departed.

We were standing in the hall with one of the nurses, Lisa, and had only been out of the room for a few minutes when Mr. Ebey slowly lifted his arm and motioned in our direction. Tom looked at me, seemingly surprised to see Mr. Ebey being this active. Then he looked at Lisa.

“This is new; he's been intubated all this time until this morning,” Lisa said. “We have never heard him talk; we don't even know if he can.”

Tom shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, let's go see what's on his mind.”

Tom handed me Alain's leash, and he and Lisa went back into the room. I waited in the hall and watched. Tom leaned in, and it looked to me as if Mr. Ebey said something to him.

Tom straightened up and broke into a huge grin. He looked at me and took a couple of steps in my direction.

“More dog,” Tom said.

Wow. Mr. Ebey had just said the first two words anyone has heard him say in weeks, the first two words that he said after heart surgery, the first two words after finally getting his endotracheal tube removed.

Not “water, please” or “pain pill” or “help me.” Out of all the words he could have picked, his first two words were “more dog.”

Mr. Ebey lit up, and his wife and nurses were smiling. I was thrilled for Mr. Ebey, for Alain and Tom, and for therapy dogs everywhere. Me, the PR guy, I saw a marketing opportunity unfolding right before my eyes.

“More dog.”

Shortly after that, my friend Jill Rappaport of NBC called and told me that she wanted to do a feature on Angel On A Leash for the
Today Show.
Jill was well known as the red-carpet reporter for
Today,
covering big-time celebrity events like the Oscars, but she was doing more and more animal stories, which was where her heart had always been. She had a great time as the floor reporter for the Westminster telecast in 2006. I was happy for her that the NBC people were letting her follow her heart. She had done some wonderful stories for the network, and away from the studio, she was writing a children's book,
Jack & Jill
(published in 2009), about her rescue dog, Jack, and his battle with cancer.

I'm a PR guy, remember, so I gave the
Today Show
a pretty quick yes. I suggested three places for them to shoot, and Jill took her crew on location.

First, they went to the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. There, they shot a couple of our teams—Barbara Babikian and her Sheltie, Lille; and Gay Cropper and her Brussels Griffons, Mr. Gruffyd Babayan—visiting and “bringing smiles and comfort to children and families,” as Jill said in the voice-over.

“When you have the opportunity to put a smile on a the face of a child who's not feeling well,” Barbara said to Jill, “it's the best feeling in the world.” She and Gay and their wonderful dogs are two of our star teams.

From there, it was over to the ASPCA for a look at a therapy dog training class taught by Michele Siegel, one of our most popular instructors. “Visiting is all about knowing your dog, and that's today's focus,” Michele told her class on camera. “Every time you interact with people, you're doing good. If you can make them feel better when you are there, that's a good thing and that could be a little miracle.”

Back at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, Jill spoke to Cynthia Sparer, executive director of the hospital. “Our job is to take care of children who are sick, but children don't stop being children just because they are sick,” she told Jill.

“They've learned that treating sick children takes more than medicine,” Jill said in my favorite part of her voice-over.

Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital had lined up pediatric oncologist Dr. Kara Kelly to be a part of the shoot, and she told Jill: “I've seen that children are much less stressed when the dogs come into the room. As you can imagine, having medical professionals come in and poke and prod them and examine them is very difficult for them. So having the dog there feels very safe to them; it helps them to forget all the other things that are happening. We'll see a reduction in their heart rate, which is a very sensitive marker in children for stress. It is interesting to see the differences sometimes when the dogs are in the room.”

For her final stop, Jill brought her crew to Ronald McDonald House. There, Chaplain Cherilyn Frei, who brings Teigh and Belle to work with her on a regular basis, told Jill that “the dogs are doing good work, and you can just see that by the smiles that light up on the children's faces, the parents', the staff's. Wherever they go, they are doing wonderful work. They are blessed and I am blessed to be the person on the other end of the leash.”

It was a great piece, more than six minutes long, and we closed it in the studio with Jill and I visiting live with
Today Show
host Meredith Vieira. Teigh and Belle were with me, looking quite alert and attentive—the world outside the studio couldn't see Cherilyn on the floor behind the cameras, keeping their attention.

Meredith, Jill, and I had a nice discussion about all that we had just seen. Meredith suggested that Jill's dog, Jack, could be a good therapy dog candidate, but Jill expressed some concern about his behavior. It gave me the opportunity to close the segment with one of my favorite expressions: “You know, we worry too much about what we teach our dogs. We need to worry more about what we learn from them, and this is a good program to show just that.”

In 2008, Ronald McDonald House New York and Angel On A Leash were honored with the prestigious Community Partnership Award, given annually by Mutual of America. We got a doggy party—hosted by the Mutual of America Foundation and its president and CEO, Thomas Gilliam—at the New York Athletic Club (NYAC), sharing the moment with our teams and families from the House. I'm not sure how often dogs get to attend functions at the NYAC, but the club has been a gracious host of Angel teams on several occasions. It is also the site for the annual Ronald McDonald House volunteer recognition dinner, and the dogs are always part of that event.

The Mutual of America annual award recognizes “outstanding nonprofit organizations in the United States that have shown exemplary leadership by facilitating partnerships with public, private, or social sector leaders who are working together as equal partners, not as donors and recipients, to build a cohesive community that serves as a model for collaborating with others for the greater good.”