Therapy Dog Saves Little Girl's Life

A young girl overcame a rare autoimmune disease thanks to the help of a therapy dog program at a Minnesota children’s hospital.

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

At funeral, dog mourns the death of Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan

This blog is dedicated to all the service men and women who put their lives in harm’s way to protect our country and is to their loyalty pet companions.

Jon Tumilson, a Navy SEAL, was one of 30 Americans killed in Afghanistan on Aug. 6 when a rocket-propelled grenade took out a U.S. Chinook helicopter. He was mourned at a service in Rockford, Iowa, attended by 1,500 family members, friends--and Hawkeye, Tumilson's dog.

The Labrador retriever was such an important part of Tumilson's life that the friends and family of the San Diego resident called the dog his "son."

When Tumilson's friend Scott Nichols walked to the front of the room to speak, Hawkeye followed, Today.com reports. "As Nichols prepared to memorialize his friend, Hawkeye dutifully laid down near the casket," Scott Stump writes.

The photo on the right was taken by Tumilson's cousin, Lisa Pembleton, and posted on Facebook. Pembleton wrote on her Facebook page, "To say that he was an amazing man doesn't do him justice. The loss of Jon to his family, military family, and friends is immeasurable."

This story reminds me of Hachikō. In 1924, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor at the University of Tokyo, took in Hachikō as a pet. During his owner's life, Hachikō greeted him at the end of each day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno did not return. The professor had suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and died, never returning to the train station where Hachikō was waiting. Every day for the next nine years the golden brown Akita waited at Shibuya station.

The permanent fixture at the train station that was Hachikō attracted the attention of other commuters. Many of the people who frequented the Shibuya train station had seen Hachikō and Professor Ueno together each day. They brought Hachikō treats and food to nourish him during his wait.

This continued for nine years with Hachikō appearing precisely when the train was due at the station.

Hachikō died on March 8, 1935, and was found on a street in Shibuya. After decades of rumors, in March 2011 scientists settled the cause of death of Hachikō. The dog had terminal cancer and a filaria infection (worms). There were also four yakitori sticks in Hachikō's stomach, but the sticks did not damage his stomach or cause his death.

Hachikō's stuffed and mounted remains are kept at the National Science Museum of Japan in Ueno, Tokyo. Hachikō's legendary faithfulness became a national symbol of loyalty.

Source: Today.com
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