Shared from the 8/14/2018 The Florida Times-Union eEdition

‘A powerful form of compassion’

Animal therapy teams taking stress out of more situations

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Kristi Leonard and her goldendoodle Sunday have participated and developed animal therapy programs throughout Jacksonville. Leonard is one of the founders and the president of Therapy Animal Coalition.

[PHOTOS PROVIDED BY THE MAYOR CLINIC STAFF]

Unlike the other kids at the children’s shelter waiting to go into foster homes, he sat in a corner by himself, refusing to participate in any activities.

Then Kristi Leonard and her golden retriever, Jacob, a registered therapy dog, arrived and convinced the boy to go for a walk.

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Kristi Leonard and Sunday, a registered animal therapy team, comfort a patient waiting for a radiation treatment at Mayo Clinic as part of Mayo’s Caring Canines program. [PROVIDED BY MAYO CLINIC STAFF]

“As we walked and talked along the facility’s grounds, he started smiling for the first time, and I knew we had made a positive impact,” said Leonard, a founder and president of Therapy Animal Coalition. “Jacob, and now my goldendoodle Sunday’s accepting brown eyes, calm people during stressful situations, while witnessing these connections touches my own soul.”

Leonard’s experience as a therapy animal team goes back to 1998 with her first dog, Jacob, when she volunteered with the Furry Friends program created for the County Children’s Shelter in San Jose, Calif. Therapy animal teams are different from the more familiar service canines that are taught to help their handler, because pet and owner are trained to act as a team to serve the public and not themselves.

Leonard also learned firsthand how the presence of pets help workers de-stress, and ultimately be more productive, when the start-up she worked for as a project manager let employees bring their dogs to work. When her husband’s career moved the family to Jacksonville in 2011 — they met at Florida State University — she was a full-time mom to three children.

At this same time, a young Sunday was proving to be the perfect therapy animal, becoming registered at only one year old. Her youngest was about to start kindergarten, and Leonard wanted to start back volunteering as an animal therapy team. Yet there wasn’t any organization in Jacksonville to guide her.

Leonard started calling hospitals and nursing centers to see if any had an established program.

The Mayo Clinic was just starting its pilot program, Caring Canines, in its radiation oncology department with the goal to have a therapy team available every day.

As patients positively responded, soon Caring Canines became so successful other Mayo departments wanted it while other health-care facilities began inquiring how they could establish their own animal therapy programs. Leonard began filling this all-encompassing need to develop and coordinate Mayo’s program and be a resource for other organizations.

Mayo changed its requirements in 2012 to allow only Pet Partners registered teams, the organization Leonard trained with in 1989. With no local chapter available, Leonard also created Pet Partners’ first Jacksonville chapter and began instructing teams.

That was five years ago.

Since then, local healthcare facilities, as well as additional types of venues wanting to add pet-assisted therapy, have increased rapidly and the need to create a resource to help both facilities and those wanting to form animal therapy teams became urgent.

That’s how Leonard got together with several other experienced pet therapy teams and they created the nonprofit coalition, a one-stop, first-of-its-kind resource where people can find answers in one place. That was in 2017 and, since then, the coalition has added a mini-horse at Nemours with more to come, tripled the number of evaluators and trainers locally, and increased the venues where pet-assisted therapy is used from predominantly health-care systems to elementary schools, the court system, college and university campuses, and summer camps.

“We are unique in the therapy animal world because we are inclusive of all registering organizations in therapy programs,” said Leonard.

Anywhere stress is heightened — whether studying for college finals, preparing for radiation treatments or waiting to testify at a court hearing — animal-assisted therapy has been known to have real health benefits.

They range from reducing stress-related factors such as elevated cortisol, heart rate and blood pressure to improved behavior, learning receptiveness and social interaction.

That’s why in Northeast Florida, more hospitals, health facilities, hospices, school reading programs and rehab centers are adding therapy animal teams to help with their programs.

“Because there are so many steps involved to becoming a team, [the coalition] takes the guess work out and provides the resources to lead folks to what they need,” said Leonard.

“It’s a powerful form of compassion, as animal therapy doesn’t just change the person you are interacting with, it changes your life and your animal’s life as they help.”

Learn more about the coalition at therapyanimalcoalition.org .

See this article in the e-Edition Here