Free Angel on a Leash by David Frei

in my direction.
    â€œMore dog,” Tom said.
    Wow. Mr. Ebey had just said the first two words anyone has heard him say in weeks, the first two words that he said after heart surgery, the first two words after finally getting his endotracheal tube removed.
    Not “water, please” or “pain pill” or “help me.” Out of all the words he could have picked, his first two words were “more dog.”
    Mr. Ebey lit up, and his wife and nurses were smiling. I was thrilled for Mr. Ebey, for Alain and Tom, and for therapy dogs everywhere. Me, the PR guy, I saw a marketing opportunity unfolding right before my eyes.
    â€œMore dog.”

    Shortly after that, my friend Jill Rappaport of NBC called and told me that she wanted to do a feature on Angel On A Leash for the Today Show. Jill was well known as the red-carpet reporter for Today, covering big-time celebrity events like the Oscars, but she was doing more and more animal stories, which was where her heart had always been. She had a great time as the floor reporter for the Westminster telecast in 2006. I was happy for her that the NBC people were letting her follow her heart. She had done some wonderful stories for the network, and away from the studio, she was writing a children’s book, Jack & Jill (published in 2009), about her rescue dog, Jack, and his battle with cancer.
    I’m a PR guy, remember, so I gave the Today Show a pretty quick yes. I suggested three places for them to shoot, and Jill took her crew on location.
    First, they went to the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital. There, they shot a couple of our teams—Barbara Babikian and her Sheltie, Lille; and Gay Cropper and her Brussels Griffons, Mr. Gruffyd Babayan—visiting and “bringing smiles and comfort to children and families,” as Jill said in the voice-over.
    â€œWhen you have the opportunity to put a smile on a the face of a child who’s not feeling well,” Barbara said to Jill, “it’s the best feeling in the world.” She and Gay and their wonderful dogs are two of our star teams.
    From there, it was over to the ASPCA for a look at a therapy dog training class taught by Michele Siegel, one of our most popular instructors. “Visiting is all about knowing your dog, and that’s today’s focus,” Michele told her class on camera. “Every time you interact with people, you’re doing good. If you can make them feel better when you are there, that’s a good thing and that could be a little miracle.”
    Back at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Jill spoke to Cynthia Sparer, executive director of the hospital. “Our job is to take care of children who are sick, but children don’t stop being children just because they are sick,” she told Jill.
    â€œThey’ve learned that treating sick children takes more than medicine,” Jill said in my favorite part of her voice-over.
    Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital had lined up pediatric oncologist Dr. Kara Kelly to be a part of the shoot, and she told Jill: “I’ve seen that children are much less stressed when the dogs come into the room. As you can imagine, having medical professionals come in and poke and prod them and examine them is very difficult for them. So having the dog there feels very safe to them; it helps them to forget all the other things that are happening. We’ll see a reduction in their heart rate, which is a very sensitive marker in children for stress. It is interesting to see the differences sometimes when the dogs are in the room.”
    For her final stop, Jill brought her crew to Ronald McDonald House. There, Chaplain Cherilyn Frei, who brings Teigh and Belle to work with her on a regular basis, told Jill that “the dogs are doing good work, and you can just see that by the smiles that light up on the children’s faces, the parents’, the staff’s. Wherever they go, they are doing