COMMUNITY PARAMEDICS TEAMING UP WITH WELLNESS DOGS

Nicole Selby has seen time and again firsthand how people's walls will come down when there's a dog around.

"We know that using animal therapy is well documented and well shown to be quite helpful in helping with people's moods, their health and wellness, their social isolation; all those things," she said.

For many years, Selby has volunteered with Therapeutic Paws of Canada as the Haldimand team lead. That program sees volunteer therapy dogs and their handlers go into the community in various places, such as schools, hospitals, long-term-care homes, etc.

"People can ask questions and relate and talk back and forth about the dog, and a relationship starts to form," she said. "We have an easier time communicating with the people we're working with, as well as it brings that person feelings of wellness and happiness."

Selby said for a number of years, Therapeutic Paws dogs would come out for visits with first responders in Haldimand.

"That was great, but it

wasn't enough for what we wanted to do, and they're already so busy, they weren't able to provide the full amount of service that we wanted," Selby said.

Specifically, Selby wanted to add wellness dogs to

Haldimand County's community paramedic program on a regular basis.

"What we ended up doing was finding welltrained dogs who are living within the community, whose families were willing

to donate them to be able to come to work with us during the day, and then go back to their families at night," Selby said.

"I looked at a bunch of different dogs, and out of those dogs, I picked the

three that I thought had the best chance of being successful in the program, with one on backup."

These dogs are currently in an orientation process, which includes them going into the public at events like

Mudcat Festival.

Once they pass that, they will go through an evaluation and certification process, then training with their handlers. In all, it will likely be the end of the year before any of the wellness dogs are able to go out for visits to patients' homes, if the patients want them to come.

Even then, Selby noted there is a strict list of requirements to ensure a good experience for both the patients and the dogs. For instance, the homes must be safe for the dogs to enter and there can't be other animals in the home.

"Really, what we're looking for is a socially isolated person who maybe used to have a pet and can no longer; is not able to take care of a pet; or they live by themselves and they love animals, but they just never had one of their own and they'd love a visit from an animal," Selby said.

The wellness dogs will also do visits in the community and attend events.

Selby said Haldimand's emergency services will still work with Therapeutic Paws to supplement the latter two, but added, "the home visits are unique to the community paramedic wellness dogs."