OSF pet therapy program hoping to grow

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Shelley Willett oversees about 70 volunteers at OSF St. Mary’s Medical Center and OSF Holy Family Medical Center.

Some of the newest volunteers are quickly becoming some of the most popular.

In April, OSF President Roxanna Crosser got a letter asking about OSF’s interest in doing a pet therapy program for patients.

The proposal went through committees, then to the patient advisory council that includes patients with experience at the hospitals.

Unanimously the council loved the idea.

They already had a pair of dog’s at Holy Family and Anderson’s dog Mozart became the third. Willett tells Galesburg’s Evening News on WGIL all pets have to go through a certification process.

“Once the pets are trained, which could be trained by the handlers themselves, they go through observers and a testing system where they might do things like put them in situations where there’s maybe a confrontation,” Willett says. “We then see how they react.”

Days that the dogs are at the hospital they ordinarily go to the nurse’s station to see if there’s any rooms that are off limits, or if there are any particular patients who could benefit.

They’ll stick their head in and ask patients if they’d like to see the dog, which Willett says most say yes, particularly if they have or have had a dog at home.

Willett urges anyone interested in volunteering or getting their pet certified to contact her.

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