Depending on the day, there’s a good chance you would find a dog with Dr. Christine E. Barron if you visited her in her office at Brown University Health’s main campus in Upper South Providence.
Barron is Director of the Lawrence A. Aubin Sr. Child Protection Center and Associate Fellowship Program Director of child abuse pediatrics at Hasbro Children’s Hospital.
The dog is Cali, an Australian labradoodle, from Ocean State Labradoodle in Rhode Island.
On the day Ocean State Stories interviewed Barron by Zoom, Cali was asleep in a dog bed behind her desk. She snoozed during the entire 15-minute call.
“It really, truly has been a remarkable opportunity that provides support for our patients and families,” Barron said. Cali provides comfort, and she can sense when an individual is stressed and respond with kindness.
Staff members benefit, too, according to Barron. Many have grown to love the dog, as Barron does.
“It’s been remarkable for us to see just such a positive impact that she has on the children, their families, and the staff,” the doctor said. “It’s been incredible.”
Cali’s work is not confined to the hospital. In what might be called a joint venture, the dog is shared with the Cranston Police Department’s Special Victims Unit, which works with children and adults who have been physically or sexually abused. Her name stands for Cranston PD, Aubin Center, and Leadership in Innovation
“I have seen her do amazing things,” Barron said. “Part of it is her training and part of it is her innate ability. I do not give her a command to go to someone who’s upset; she automatically, on her own, goes to someone who is. It’s really impressive. She assesses it. I had a mom once ask me, ‘What if I fake cry? What will happen?’ And I said, ‘I’ve never tried it.’
“So the mother tried it and Cali went to her, which made her really cry because it was so touching that she immediately responded to that.”
Kerri Lynch is the Director of Occupational Therapy at Butler Hospital, where she oversees the Pet Therapy Program. Like Barron, she has witnessed the wonders that an animal can accomplish.
The animal she refers to is Butler’s Pippa, a 30-pound mixed breed who was part of a litter abandoned on a road somewhere in the South.
“I got her at six weeks old,” Lynch said. Her siblings were adopted, but she was the runt of the litter. She was very, very sick.”
Now six, Pippa recovered, and after the rescue group that saved the litter had properly
vetted her, Lynch adopted her. She lives at home with Lynch, who has other pets.
She turned out to be a star in her certification and training, according to Lynch.
“Typically, the highest level of training that people will seek for a dog is what’s called canine good citizenship. That’s all about temperament and being able to be handled and have people touch them and be around them and obey some basic commands and some of the more advanced commands.
“And then after that, therapy dogs go into a therapy dog program. So she was trained with the Paws from the Heart Pet Therapy program, which is based in Rhode Island and describes itself online as ‘a compassionate and supportive 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, established in October 2017, dedicated to bringing qualified and specialty trained pet therapy dog teams into local communities to deliver various outreach programs while promoting health, happiness and healing to those in need.’”
Pippa, however, does not do community work or work with community programs.
Said Lynch: “Pippa’s always had a very calm temperament. She was the youngest to graduate from her therapy group.”
At Butler, the dog seems to have a sixth sense in her interactions with patients, according to Lynch.
“I work a lot on our intensive treatment units, which have some of our more chronic, persistent mental illness patients. Maybe the behavior of the patients or the volume level of the patients or whatever would be scary for another dog, but she seems to understand that their illness is not a part of who they are.
“She really seems to find a connection with people who are having a lot of difficulty connecting. She has a way of going up to the people who’ve been crying. She’s a caretaker for sure.”
“Creating a Therapeutic and Healing Environment with a Pet Therapy program,” a 2009 study published in the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Clinical Practice (Therapy), found that “pet therapy is a low-tech, low-cost therapy that improved mood and was meaningful to hospitalized patients.”
Specifically, the authors wrote, “Compared with baseline, patients had significant decreases in pain, respiratory rate and negative mood state and a significant increase in perceived energy level.”
Brown University Health has reached the same conclusion. “The Animal Visitation Program at Rhode Island Hospital and Hasbro Children’s brings comfort and ease to young patients through visits from specially trained dogs,” the state’s largest healthcare system writes.
“Studies have shown that visits from animals can enhance a patient’s mood and well-being, and reduce their anxiety. For children, hospital stays can be especially scary and lonely. Having a visit from a four-legged friend can lift their spirits and provide some much-needed distraction, affection and fun.”
Leading hospitals across the country that have implemented programs include:
- Mass General Brigham, in Boston.
- Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore
- The Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland.
- The Mayo Clinic, which has its main campus in Rochester, Minnesota.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children, which has locations in Boston; Chicago; Portland, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Honolulu, Hawaii, among other places.
At Brown University Health’s Bradley Hospital, a psychiatric center for children and adolescents, mental health counselor and board-certified art therapist Melissa Weaver manages the pet therapy program.
“Right now, we have two in-house dogs that visit our four inpatient units,” she told Ocean State Stories. “We are continuing to interview and hopefully we’ll have more to send to our group homes and to other programs. They visit bi-weekly for half hour visits.”
The two dogs are Willow, a Wheaton terrier, and Winston, a Goldendoodle.
“What I see on the units with [Willow and Winston] is just overwhelming joy and calm, not just for the kids, but for the staff as well,” Weaver said. “Separate from their rigorous training and background and certification, there’s just an intangible quality to their temperament. That, I think, sets them apart from your average dog.”
According to Weaver, a large number of patients come to Bradley with a “history of trauma.” While hospitalized, she said, “They’re actively learning how to trust people, the world, etcetera. These kinds of encounters can be really impactful in that way. If they experience safe and positive encounters with the dogs, this can translate globally while working here at the hospital or elsewhere towards more meaningful connections with the world.”
What reactions do Willow and Winston elicit?
“The kids love, love, love, love them,” she said. “You just see their faces light up and their whole affect shifts and their moods change. Everyone here is working really hard in their efforts towards a happier, healthier life. To take a little bit of a break and sit with a dog is sometimes invaluable.”
As the Ocean State Stories interview with Hasbro Children’s Hospital’s Barron wound down, the doctor described what lay ahead for Cali.
“She’ll be here for the whole day,” Barron said. “Right now, we have clinic patients. We have posters up identifying when she’s here that say, ‘We work with a comfort therapy dog’ and Cali will go out and we always ask, ‘Would you like to meet her today?’ And sometimes people don’t want to and that’s fine; sometimes people are afraid of dogs too.
“And if they do want it, then she goes out in the waiting room and she says hi to them, sits in a chair with them. When we have to get history from kids and from families she’s in there with us. And then she can also even be part of the exam. And I have to tell you it has been amazing to me.
“So I can tell you about a patient who I couldn’t even get into my exam room. They were fearful. So we rescheduled that patient to come when Cali was here and Cali met that patient at the front door and we did her whole exam without any concern or problem. We were fine. We did her whole checkup with no problems. So it’s been incredible to see how helpful it is for patients.”
Copyright © 2025 Salve Regina University. Originally published by OceanStateStories.org.
