Pet Project

Jodi Snapp Kurland ’92 brings dogs to the hospital to help sick kids.

by Julie Waters, M.M. ’91

Jodi Snapp Kurland ’92 admits she’s crazy about dogs. It’s evident when she talks about Rusty, Cosette, and Little Guy, the three mixed-breed dogs that she and her husband, Eric Kurland ’92, share their home with. So when she was seeking a new career challenge a few years ago, Kurland, who has been a physical therapist at Childrens [sic] Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) for seven years, began researching how dogs could be used in rehabilitative therapy.

"The concept had been pretty widely accepted for about 10 years," says Kurland. "I started talking to some coworkers about getting something like that going at our hospital, which was looking for new ways to help make hospitalization for sick children less stressful." Years earlier, staff had resisted the idea of having animals at the hospital because not enough was known about infection control. Now, with more information, the administration thought pet therapy would be a good fit for its family-centered care model.

In April 2000 Kurland attended a conference at which she learned how to utilize dogs in physical, occupational, and speech therapy and how to set up a pet therapy program. She also signed up with an organization to make social visits at a local nursing home with one of her own dogs, Little Guy. Within months she had formed a multidisciplinary committee at CHLA of nurses, therapists, social workers, and doctors; together they created a plan to implement a pet therapy program at the hospital.

After studying programs at other hospitals, surveying the doctors at CHLA, and setting strict standards, Kurland launched PAWS (Pets Assisting with Smiles) 4 Kids last May. And although some surgeons still seem surprised when they discover a dog in the doctors’ lounge, the response by hospital staff and administration has been very positive.

Currently 12 volunteer teams—each consisting of one dog and one human volunteer—visit children in the hospital three days a week. Teams visit almost all units of the hospital, inpatient and outpatient, including postsurgical, hematology and oncology, medical, rehabilitation, infectious disease and respiratory, and recovery. Visits often take place at the child’s bedside and vary depending on the child’s level of comfort. Some children want the dogs up on the bed with them, and some want them to sit in a nearby chair or across the room. Many children pet, brush, or play ball with the dogs; some children only look at the pets and talk with the volunteer. Each volunteer carries a Polaroid camera to take pictures of the kids with their new canine friends. "As soon as a dog enters a room with a child lying there in bed, hooked up to an IV, the child’s face just lights up," says Kurland. "The human volunteers are very good at finding out the limits of the kids and not pushing the therapy on them. Some kids just don’t want it, and that’s fine." And some kids are in isolation rooms—often with infections or compromised immune systems. Volunteers reach these children by holding up a small dog to the glass or giving them a photo of a dog.

Since no money is available internally through the hospital to run Kurland’s program—which requires funding to train and evaluate the dogs and volunteers—CHLA contracts with an outside agency, Love on 4 Paws. Using standards set by the Delta Society, a national organization that promotes the positive benefits of human-animal interaction and provides guidelines for using animals in health care settings, Love on 4 Paws provides teams of dogs and volunteers already trained and approved for hospital visits. In preparation, the dogs and their owners must pass an evaluation and attend workshops through the agency, as well as a general volunteer training program through the hospital. Since a pediatric care facility is considered a high-risk environment, the dogs and volunteers are strictly screened and must have experience at other health care facilities. And there is always on-site supervision of the volunteers.

In the last few months the dogs have also been working in the occupational and physical therapy department, where their talents are incorporated into therapeutic activities. "To work on arm strength, we have patients throw a ball to the dog. To work on coordination, they brush the dog," Kurland explains. "If we’re working on walking abilities, having the children walk one of the dogs may motivate them more. Sometimes the dogs just provide a distraction during an uncomfortable activity, such as stretching."

Among the benefits Kurland sees in the program are relaxation, stress reduction, increased self-esteem, a connection with nature, exercise and sensory stimulation, and an opportunity to communicate with an animal without regard for speech or hearing deficits. Contact with the dogs can also comfort the children as they undergo painful procedures, such as intravenous needle insertions.

Kurland hasn’t yet done an official study of the outcomes of the program. Although she intends to perform one, she doesn’t need a study to tell her how positive the results have been. "It’s great when you actually see these children—who are sick and trapped in the hospital—smile, laugh, and have fun in a way that you don’t see through anything else," Kurland says. She shares a story about seven-year-old Victor, who had just undergone extensive surgery to remove a brain tumor: "During the first few weeks after surgery, he really wasn’t doing much. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t responding consistently to anything. When one of the dogs came around, he smiled for the first time—the most response anyone had gotten from him since the surgery. He went on to our rehab unit and did fairly well. He loved the dogs, and the more he woke up, the more he could play with them."

Not only the children benefit from the PAWS program. "Many times infants or very small children may not even know the dog is there," explains Kurland. "But the dogs provide comfort for the parents." During one such visit, a volunteer led Baci, a five-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever, into a room where a mother, sitting with her sleeping child, was crying. Baci seemed to understand. Tugging her handler, the lab approached the crying woman and started gently licking her face. It must have helped, because the mother asked for another team to be sent in.

"The program is beneficial for the staff as well," Kurland notes. "The nurses are often really busy, running around having a stressful day. Then the dogs arrive, and they stop to pet them. Initially it was such a novelty that we had to remind the staff that the dogs were there for the kids and families, too. The dogs would barely make it to the unit before the nurses surrounded them. Everyone was so excited. "

The program also gives children at the hospital—most of whom live in the inner city—a positive experience with a pet who offers unconditional love and acceptance. "Many of the children have seen only scary guard dogs behind a fence, and they think all dogs are mean," explains Kurland. "When they meet the dogs in our program, they gain a new sensibility of what a dog can be."

Since CHLA is a public, not-for-profit facility, funding is key to the growth of the program. Kurland is constantly searching for donors and applying for grants to cover the cost of off-site training and coaching and on-site supervision. She is certain that all the effort is worth it and that her program’s tough standards will help ensure its future at the hospital.

Kurland hopes to expand the program to seven days a week and to research the viability of pet therapy as a pain management tool. Her committee is also considering a patient-family satisfaction survey to assess the effectiveness of the program, which Kurland says may become a model for other hospitals.

As for her own future as a pet therapist, Kurland is working with one of her dogs, Rusty, hoping he’ll eventually make hospital visits through PAWS. "The problem is," she laughs, "I set up a program with such strict standards that my own dogs don’t even qualify!"