[Dailydrool] paw pals, hospice visits

[Nancy Cohen]

Einstein and Dixie are new volunteers here in Florida with Vitas hospice.
 They did their first visit today.  I took Einstein to see some dementia
patients who mostly were non-verbal, but smiled when they saw the dogs.
 Marty had Dixie with patients that were not as sick and more verbal.  We
rode an elevator up to the floor when we got there, but going down it was
easier with the stairs.  It was then that Marty discovered Dixie had no
idea what stairs were !  She is a 2 or 3 year old rescue who has been with
us 6 months thanks to Tristate Basset Rescue.  She was found with another
dog as a stray with no known history.  It was kind of sad to think in all
that time she never encountered stairs.  She also weighed a boney 42 lbs
when we got her, and had been thru 2 doses of heartworm treatments and all
kinds of treatments for worms.  Since then she tested negative for
heartworm, was declared healthy and has gained 16 much needed pounds.  We
are glad that she and Einstein are able to visit people and bring some
smiles and joy into their very diminished world.  For anyone interested,
Vitas is a national program for hospice and loves having well behaved dogs
in their paw pal program.  Check it out and share the love.  nancy,
einstein and   dixie
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.dailydrool.org/pipermail/dailydrool-dailydrool.org/attachments/20140307/435ec9e0/attachment.htm>