I've mentioned before that me and my dog are a certified therapy team.
This means that we get to go to hospitals, libraries, nursing homes, etc and visit and brighten up someone's day.
Now I just recently set up regular visits with a children's psychiatric unit - which I was pumped about. I love working with children - it's what I miss most about working at my stupid desk job.
So we had a visit this past Sunday at 1PM.
We arrived and immediately 2 high energy, extremely loud approximately 8 year old boys were all up in my dog's face - chasing him around the room, exclaiming at his face, etc. I embraced their excitement but helped them to understand they needed to be a bit more settled until he was more familiar with them.
After about 20 minutes of this, they more or less lost interest and one of them actually ended up having disruption issues for the next hour and a half (by disruption I mean shouting, banging, stomping, and all that jazz).
The rest of the population in the room was teenagers who were definitely more subdued in their interest.
So me and my dog just kind of hung out in the room with them, and occasionally someone would come sit and pat him and talk to him.
We generally leave at about 2PM, which is about an hour of my dog being on extreme good work behavior - which is tiring for him.
However, right around this time, a young boy entered the room.
He had an angry "tough-guy" look on and sat himself in the corner.
Despite this look, he kept eyeing my dog.
I asked if he would like to come meet him.
Nooooo, ughhhh!
He quickly crossed his arms and looked away.
Every question he was asked - was responded to in a similar fashion. Extreme whiney, angry voice - one word answers.
But his eye would keep returning to my dog.
I offered him a dog treat, to just you know, hang on to in case he wanted to give it to my dog.
The chair inched towards us a bit.
For the next 45 minutes (which all the while there was major yelling, banging, and other disruptions occuring pretty extremely by the other boy), there was a slow inching and peaking interest.
I got questions of:
Is he a wolf?
Does he have big teeth?
How is he 2 different kinds of dogs?
That last one was fun to explain.
Ultimately, after 45 minutes, this young boy was laying on the floor eye-to-eye with my dog, rubbing his head, scratching his ears, and playing with his paws.
All the while having mundane conversation with me as my dog stared happily into his eyes - and offered a few licks which were received with happy laughter.
Seriously my dog is a freaking rockstar.
At about 3PM, the boy was called to head to his next group and one of the nurses came over to thank me. She also informed me that he had had a really tough couple of days and that today was especially rough for him, in fact most of his morning was spent in tears. She said that what my dog did for him was huge and that she was so appreciative we never questioned the time or staying an extra hour.
Staying the extra time was no concern because quite seriously, that extra hour and the brightening of that young boys' day is why we do it.
If we can turn around one day, change one life - even by a minute amount - it's totally worth it.
That short hour was totally worth it.
