Therapy Dogs

by Debby Mayer
with photos by Debby Mayer

Dr. Moore and I are having a family conference. It’s about seven o’clock in the evening; I’ve just arrived at the hospital, and she’s about to depart. She’s given Dan his fourth chemo treatment, second “lumbar”—an injection into his spine. He’s dozing now, and we stand at the foot of his bed while she tells me things she’s said before—that he’s more attentive this week, and his eye movement continues to improve.

 

It’s July 10, and Dan’s been in this hospital since May 30. If he isn’t attentive sometimes I wonder if he’s bored, tired of being asked the same questions every day, but I don’t say that. What I do take a breath and say, is: “Would it be all right, if I brought our dogs to visit Dan sometimes?”

 

A nurse gave me this idea, a nurse in training, that is, a robust woman with freckles across her nose, who looked as if she might have grown up on one of the farms still to be found within 30 miles of this hospital. It was early June then, and Dan was on another floor while neurologists who seemed to consider him a theoretical problem, not a human one, tried to find out what was wrong with him and decide how to treat it. That day, I arrived in the afternoon, to find this pleasant young woman sitting with Dan at the end of the hallway, at the window overlooking the city. He’d had a shower that morning, she reported, and had been very helpful, washing his hair and beard.

 

Our dogs are two basenjis, small, shorthaired African hounds, red with white markings. Basenjis have fox-like faces and tails that curl up and over their backs. They’re……. click here for more.

Dan & Cooper in DC

Cafe Hounds, NYC