Ally Gillen was just like any normal 10-year old until one day in 2008 when she began to have trouble walking. Almost overnight, Ally’s condition deteriorated and got to the point where she had trouble making simple movements. Doctors ran tests and she was diagnosed with juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM), an extremely rare autoimmune connective tissue disease that affects one in a million children.
Upon receiving her diagnosis, Ally was checked into Children’s Hospitals & Clinics of Minnesota, where she spent the next seven weeks. Ally’s mother, Heather Gillen, says that her daughter was in so much pain that she could barely lift her head up from the hospital bed. “When the occupational therapists would come into her room to get her to move, she would cry because it hurt so much. I wanted to yell ‘don’t touch my daughter.’”
During the course of her treatment, an occupational therapist brought a therapy dog in to visit Ally. After spending Thanksgiving, Christmas, and her birthday in the hospital, Ally missed her own dog, Angel, and was excited to spend some time with the therapy dog. “The occupational therapist would place a dog on my shoulder so I could pet him. Then she would move the dog to my other shoulder or other part of my body. I would reach down and pet the dog,” explains Ally.
Over the course of the next few weeks, Ally engaged in a variety of rehabilitation exercises which involved therapy dogs. She moved her arms around to pet the dogs and redeveloped her fine motor skills by dressing them up costumes and taking them for walks in her wheelchair. A small dog bearing a tic-tac-toe board game on its back kept Ally challenged, as she had to get on the floor and move the pieces of the board game around in order to play.
Forty-nine days after the therapy dogs began visiting, Ally was able to move out of a hospital bed and into a wheelchair. She resumed her therapy with Children’s Hospitals & Clinics of Minnesota on an outpatient basis, where she continued to work with the dogs. Now at twelve years old, Ally has decided that she wants to become an occupational therapist and work with therapy dogs down the line. She enrolled her seven-year-old dog, Angel, in the Delta Therapy Dog Certification program, which she completed alongside her mother. Ally and Angel visit Children’s once a week and bring joy to many of the hospital’s patients.
Ally attributes working with the pet therapy program to saving her life. “Dogs are a big part of my life and always will be. Now that all of this has happened, I’m going to get a degree in OT when I’m older. And I will train a few dogs to be therapy dogs.”
source : Nicole Pajer
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