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>> When I bring Cyrus to meet patients in the hospital, I often hear people say,
"If he can do it, I can do it," or "he's just like me."
Cyrus was born without front legs and he's a little bit different than other dogs, but
he doesn't know that.
And he's always, you know, happy and positive, and dogs don't know any differently, like
they don't understand that they're different or that they're having a problem.
So, dogs tend to make people feel confident that they can overcome the problems that they
might be facing in the hospital.
This is what he would prefer to do all day, is just be in someone's lap.
>> Cyrus, he's my kind of dog.
He was quiet and eager to snuggle, and so I feel like I can just curl up on the couch
with Cyrus.
>> We don't have pets at home and so it's been very special for us to be a part
of this program at CHOP.
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>> Taking care of patients is more than just giving them medications
and checking their vitals once in a while.
It's really looking after their wellbeing, the psychologically, spiritually, physically.
And therapy dogs just really help with a lot of that because it takes care of a lot of
the psychological aspect of it.
If it brightens their day for just 15 minutes, they just have a much better day for the rest
of the day.
>> The most important thing is that they have a good temperament and they're comfortable
with people and they're happy to just kind of lay and chill with people.
>> Currently our program is all volunteer.
We have retirees; we have grad students; we have stay-at-home moms; we have working professionals
and everything in between, giving their time to come in here and work with our kids and
their families.
>> We feel really fortunate that our volunteers are so generous with their
time and that they spend so much time up on the units, but we are getting more and more
requests from our patients and families and we would love to have the opportunity to,
you know, offer a pet therapy visit on a daily basis.
>> Britney, this is Cooper
>> Hi Cooper
>> And we're really fortunate to have very generous donors who allow
the opportunities to provide the funds to be able to work with our volunteers and getting
them on the floor.
>> We are so grateful for all of the donations that are made for this program.
It wouldn't be possible without the donors, so we thank them from the bottom of our hearts
for the Pet Therapy Program at CHOP.
>> You could be like miserable on this hand and like there's a dog sitting like happy,
and that happy outweighs miserable.
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