Alliance of Therapy Pets

Please join us on our next walkabout! Well-behaved pooches on leash (and their humans!) are invited. Per city ordinance in response to COVID-19, please maintain a distance of at least six feet from others who are not in your household. If physical distancing is not possible, masks should be worn.

Wally wasn't going to take the fall season lying down (or maybe he was!) at the October 2020 ATP walkabout at Phelps Grove Park. Next walkabout: Sunday, Nov. 15, 2:00 PM. at Nathanael Greene Park. Meet by the Dr. Bill Roston Native Butterfly House.

Here are some images from the ATP walkabout on Oct. 11 at Phelps Grove Park, shared by Erin Harrison. Nice day, such great teams! https://www.facebook.com/Kyratwl/posts/5086940187998321

Gunner was happy for his fur-lough to be over, and to get back to his therapy dog gig at Marionville. Grrreat job, team Tonna/Gunner!

ATP therapy dog Bucky made a special visit to the Integrity Home Care + Hospice office in August, to provide comfort to some of the employees there. Thank you, Team Laurie/Bucky!

ATP September 2020 Walkabout pics!!

So much fun at Nathanael Greene Park tonight at the walkabout. Thanks to Erin Harrison for sharing these images. Please add names if we don't get them all (or correct us if we get names wrong). Thanks to all the humans and pooches that turned out. It's been too long. Stay tuned for our next walkabout in October.

Congrrrratulations to Tuff and his human, Lea Anne! He passed his beginner class! What a lot of folks don't know is that Tuff is a farm dog and knew little about riding in a vehicle, much less going into a class with other pooches and humans that he didn't know. Look how confident he looks not! Grrreat job! We look forward to having Tuff take his therapy dog test one day. For those of you that don't know, Lea Anne is our liaison with Integrity Home Care and Hospice. Our Integrity/ATP teams look forward to resuming our visits with Integrity Hospice patients at some point in the future.

The sweet story of Blue, the dog that no one wanted (but many people needed). https://www.thedodo.com//6-tips-for-picking-the-right-food

Smokey was found in a foxhole in New Guinea in Feb 1944. The American thought she must have been a Japanese soldier's dog, but when he took her to a POW camp, t...hey found out she didn't understand commands in Japanese of English. The soldier sold Smokey to Cpl. William Wynne of Cleveland OH for 2 dollars Australian. Over the next two years Wynne carried Smokey in his backpack, fought in the jungles of Rock Island and New Guinea, flew 12 air/sea rescue, She survived 150 air raids on New Guinea and made it through a typhoon at Okinawa, made a combat jump in Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, in a parachute made for her. She would warn G.I's of incoming artillery and was dubbed the "angel from a foxhole." Early in retaking the Philippines combat engineers were setting up a telegraph line to an airfield. The joints collapsed filling them in with sand. Cpl. Wynne knew that Smokey could climb through the pipe with a new line and that is what she did. Smoky's work saved approximately 250 ground crewmen from having to move around and keep operational 40 fighters and reconnaissance planes, while a construction detail dug up the taxiway, placing the men and the planes in danger from enemy bombings. What would have been a dangerous three-day digging task to place the wire was instead completed in minutes. In her down time she preformed tricks with the Special Services to improve the moral of the troops and visited hospitals in Australia and Korea. Visiting with the sick and wounded, she became the first recorded "therapy dog". After the war she became a sensation back int the states, had a live TV show, and often visited Veterans hospitals. Smoky's work as a therapy dog continued for 12 years. Wynne had Smokey 14 years before she passed away. He buried her in a 30 caliber ammo box in Rocky River Reservation, Ohio. Smokey, the smallest war hero weighing in at 4 lbs even and standing 7 inches tall.....