Meet the 'dog-tors' - Milo, Hattie, Quinn, Jessie, Leo and Archie.
A team of therapy dogs is helping to ease the nerves of sick children going through medical procedures at Southampton Children’s Hospital in the UK.
In addition to providing comfort and smiles to the young patients, the six golden retrievers are also showing sick kids that medical procedures aren’t as scary as they may seem.
It all started about seven years ago when a young boy in hospital needed to wear a mask and having never used one before, he found it a little daunting, so a therapy dog who was there to provide some much needed comfort put up his paw to help.
“One of the therapy dogs was happy to poke his nose in a spare mask and have a sniff,” volunteer and ‘dog mum’ Lyndsey Uglow told Yahoo News Australia.
As soon as the patient saw that the dog was ‘using’ the mask, he was happy to give it a try too.
A year-long study into the impacts of therapy dogs on children has proven that the presence of dogs reduced anxiety in young patients when waiting for tests, investigations and examinations. Cheers to that!