Cookeville Regional Medical Center’s Pet Buddy Program is seeing growth as more volunteers are deciding to lend a helping hand.
CRMC Volunteer Service Coordinator Cindy Maxwell said the Pet Buddy Program is a group of volunteers that partner with pet therapy dogs and pet handlers to help gain extra feedback from the therapy sessions. Maxwell said the program was depleted during COVID.
“It’s really nice to watch this start growing again because like I said prior to COVID we had over a hundred volunteers in different aspects of the hospital,” Maxwell said. “So now with the pet therapy program growing, we are needing more buddies. So it is nice to watch it growing again and to get the word out there.”
Maxwell said pet buddies measure the success of the pet therapy program by taking comments, notes, and suggestions from patients and staff. Maxwell said pet buddies play an important role as they also provide the pet handler an extra set of eyes and hands during therapy sessions.
“When the dogs are in their pet therapy or their working mode so to speak,” Maxwell said. “It’s not necessarily that it’s hard on the dog, but they have a job to do. When they are out of that mode, then they go back to being a dog running around, jumping, and playing. So it’s nice to have these extra hands with the handler to watch the dog and to keep the program growing.”
Maxwell said she hopes the pet buddy and pet therapy program continue to grow together in the future. Maxwell said the goal is to further expand pet therapy services outside of the hospital.
“There’s a good opportunity there with pet therapy with all the things in the community,” Maxwell said. “So we hope to grow that and get the word out there it’s not just visiting in the hospital which is our main goal but we can also go outside of the hospital.”
Maxwell said the program sometimes visits the library and some local schools. Maxwell said the Pet Buddy Program is still looking for more volunteers to grow the program further.
