Welcome to Happiness Unleashed with your host, Brittany Darenbacher, presented by Live Happy.

Plenty of research shows that pets can help us heal, and now even hospitals are warming up to the idea.

I'm Paula Phelpsps and this week I'm joining

Brittany as she sits down with Heather Storr, a certified child life specialist at Norton

Children's in Louisville, Kentucky. Heather manages the facility dog program at Norton Health Care,

which allows animals to play a very important role in the healing process for patients, families, and their caregivers.

Join us as we learn how they are changing lives, one hospital bed at a time.

Tell us what a facility dog program is.

Sure, yeah.

So our facility dog program launched in 2017, and we have 12 full-time working dogs and our dogs are

trained to help really just support our patients and our families and our staff as well in the

hospital setting. You know, they just provide that amazing love and laughter like humans cannot.

So, you know, asked our leadership team about doing something like that. And they were like,

sure, this sounds great. And so did some research and talked to some other hospitals that had

programs in place. Yeah. So about a year later, we were up and

running. You're in Louisville, Kentucky. Tell everyone what the name of the program is, because it's so

cute. Yes, our program is Heel Dog, Heal. Yes, our marketing team did a great job of coming up with a name for our program,

and I love it very much. And who are the patients? Who are the patients that the facility dogs are

visiting? What's really unique about our program is we have full-time facility dogs that work in our

pediatric areas, and then also dogs that work in our adult areas and then also dogs that work in our adult areas.

And I really love that about our program.

You'll find that many children's hospitals have facility dog programs.

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