Working with us, Winnie and Maverick help children feel safe sharing their worries, comfortable in the medical setting, and prepared and supported during medical procedures. They help identify those most in need and teach them positive coping skills.
Torie Miele and Sonya Charles, Child Life specialists and in-residence dog handlersPediatric patients at two Dartmouth Health Children’s sites in New Hampshire now have an extra special (and furry) addition to their care teams. The Child Life Program has introduced two in-residence Labrador Retrievers—Winnie, a one-and-a-half-year-old chocolate lab who works at Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics Manchester, and Maverick, a two-year-old black lab based at the Dartmouth Health’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
Both Winnie and Maverick live with a Child Life specialist who is also their full-time human handler at work. Winnie, whose handler is Sonya Charles, enjoys swimming and playing with her stuffed alligator, and Maverick, whose handler is Torie Miele, loves to kayak, collect stuffed animals, and have his belly rubbed. Both dogs were specially trained by the ColdSprings Healing Paws Foundation in New Ipswich, NH, in order to join the Dartmouth Health Children’s team.
“Working with us, Winnie and Maverick help children feel safe sharing their worries, comfortable in the medical setting, and prepared and supported during medical procedures,” Charles and Miele said. “They help identify those most in need and teach them positive coping skills.”
The new facility dog program is funded through philanthropic support from donors to Dartmouth Health Children’s. Winnie is sponsored through a grant from the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation’s Dogs for Joy program. Launched in 2018, the goal of Dogs for Joy is to dramatically increase the number of in-residence dogs working in children’s hospitals around the country and the prevalence of animal-assisted therapy as part of treatment. Dogs for Joy in-residence dogs are trained to aid healthcare staff with everyday tasks like showing patients how to take a pill, modeling how to wear a hospital gown, keeping calm during a medical intervention, and incentivizing them to be active with the dog.
“The Joy in Childhood Foundation’s mission is to bring simple joys to children battling illness or hunger,” said Victor Carvalho, a Dunkin’ franchise owner and chairman of the Dunkin’ Joy in Childhood Foundation board of directors. “Our Dogs for Joy program helps do just that for kids in hospitals throughout the country, bringing them companionship during caregiving. We look forward to seeing the meaningful impact that Winnie has on kids at Dartmouth Health Children’s.”
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital (Children’s Hospital at DHMC/CHaD) and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.
About Dartmouth Health Children's
Dartmouth Health Children’s is the only comprehensive pediatric healthcare system in the region with the first integrative medicine children’s hospital in the country. Fully integrated in Dartmouth Health and anchored for more than 30 years by Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (CHaD) in Lebanon, NH, Dartmouth Health Children’s promotes health, advances knowledge, and delivers the best patient- and family-centered care for infants, children, and adolescents across New Hampshire and Vermont. Dartmouth Health Children’s conducts groundbreaking research and educates the next generations of health professionals as the primary pediatric partner of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Highly skilled, inclusive, and collaborative children’s health professionals provide care in multiple settings across the region. A unique partnership between DH and the state of New Hampshire provides the only inpatient psychiatric care for children and adolescents in the state at Hampstead Hospital. Outpatient specialty visits and same-day surgery services are available at more than 20 locations, including all Dartmouth Health member locations, throughout New Hampshire and Vermont.