Every Saturday morning on E. 75th St., a group of dogs and their owners gather in the brightly colored backroom of Max Tamara’s 75th & Paws doggy daycare.
For this hour, the facility has been transformed into a dog training school. At 10:30 a.m., everyone has a cup of coffee in one hand, a bag of treats in the other.
The room is full of a mix of breeds, ranging in size from a King Charles cavalier spaniel to a Labrador retriever.
Michele Siegel, a charismatic source of energy bouncing around the room, brings the group to order. She warmly commands everyone to stand up and instructs, “Look at your dog, make eye contact with him or her. Say their name repeatedly, and as you say their name, give them a treat.”
For the dogs, today is the first day of Siegel’s seven-week course, “Go Say Hi.” This teaches dogs and handlers the basic obedience and safety training skills needed to become a successful therapy dog volunteer team.
Therapy dog volunteer teams are pairs of handlers and canines qualified to provide care and rehabilitation to others through the simple act of visitation at facilities such as schools, hospitals or nursing homes.
Because most facilities require liability insurance, to work in such programs involves becoming registered with an affiliated therapy dog program like Pet Partners, a non-profit organization that registers and insures therapy dog volunteer teams so they are eligible to work with facilities.
The basic steps of becoming a registered team with Pet Partners are an online course for the handler, a health screening for the dog, and an in-person team evaluation.
The team evaluation measures how the handler and dog can adapt in the unpredictable situations they might encounter in a real-life therapy environment. While Siegel’s class is not a requirement to become registered with Pet Partners, it enhances the training and preparation for the final evaluation.
“The best therapy dogs genuinely enjoy the company of humans other than their own handler. They will be OK with attracting attention, and will be able to work well with other dogs,” says Siegel, who has 20 years of-experience with animal-assisted therapy and is also a master team evaluator for Pet Partners.
“The human’s main goal,” she adds, “is to keep the animal safe.”
Michele Morelli arrived at the Ronald McDonald House Saturday afternoon to take the Pet Partners team evaluation. Morelli, 37, a digital marketing executive for AOL, enrolled in Siegel’s class because her 18-month-old French bulldog, Buckminster, is a bubbly socialite in their East Village neighborhood, and she thought his charms would be perfectly suited to impact the community.
“I feel like a much happier, positive person by giving back, and to be able to do that with an animal you love so much is amazing,” she coos as she squeezes Buckminster, who had just passed the evaluation with flying colors.
Morelli, whose grandmother was diagnosed with dementia and now lives in a Brooklyn nursing home, plans to bring Buckminster to visit with the elderly on a weekly basis now that the team has been officially cleared to volunteer.
David Frei is president and CEO of Angel on a Leash, an organization that implements therapy dog programs within facilities such as Ronald McDonald House, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and NY Presbyterian Children’s Hospital. He has been an advocate for dog-assisted therapy for many years — since before dogs were allowed in most hospitals.
Frei’s book, named after the organization, details his theories on why dog therapy is effective and important to patients’ health.
“Studies have shown that when you interact with a dog, whether it’s petting a dog or just looking at a dog and smiling, it increases the flow of endorphins, the good hormones that make you feel better. When you feel better, your blood pressure and your heart rate go down,” he says.
Animal-assisted therapy has garnered media recognition recently for comforting victims in the wake of national emergencies, including the Newtown school shooting, Boston marathon bombing and Hurricane Sandy.
Pet Partners, one of many organizations with a presence in the city, has over 290 animal teams in New York, 95 percent of which are dogs, according to the NYC therapy animal program coordinator, Nancy George-Michalson.
“We have dogs in just about every hospital in Manhattan… and the program is growing continuously,” she says.
Another nonprofit organization with a similar goal, The Good Dog Foundation, has partnered with the psycho-social rehabilitation department at NY Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division, a facility that aims to improve functioning in patients suffering from mental illnesses. The Good Dog Foundation coordinates therapy volunteer team visits during key situations, including the admissions process.
“It can be very stressful to be admitted into the hospital,” says Donna Gillet, a licensed mental health counselor who has worked in the psycho-social unit for over 16 years. “We find that the patients feel calmer, more relaxed and not so anxious about being hospitalized when the dogs are present.”
Having the dogs around also has become a way to determine treatment when symptoms are a challenge to pinpoint.
“Sometimes we have children who are not living with their biological parents, or have been abused. They will not allow adults to come near them, or are very closed off and will not speak to anyone,” explains Gillet. “When we bring in the dogs, they allow the dogs to be near them. The dogs can make contact, and the children will often tell their secrets and problems to the dog, so we are able to form a treatment plan.”
Chelsea resident Suzanne Farkas and her 5-year-old Havanese-poodle mix Pekoe have been volunteering with The Good Dog Foundation for four years. While their work has been rewarding, Farkas acknowledges it is not for the faint of heart.
“Sometimes…I feel a lot of emotions around the difficulties that the patients and their families must face every day,” Farkas admits.
While volunteering can be emotionally challenging, the efforts remain invaluable to recipients like Oklahoma resident Mary Baughman, whose son Mitchell, 12, is being treated for acute myeloid leukemia at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
“Mitchell loves dogs, and whenever he sees a therapy dog, it helps remind him of home and takes his mind off of why he’s here,” says Baughman, who has been residing at the Ronald McDonald House in Manhattan since April.
This Halloween, the Ronald McDonald House, in partnership with Angel on a Leash, conducted its annual therapy dog parade, in which the kids escorted the therapy dogs, all in costume, around the facility’s Upper East Side block.
“During the parade, Mitchell was all smiles,” remembers Baughman. “As a parent, to see him in a place where his mind is taken off the treatment, it’s therapy for me just to see him experience that.”