Therapy dog Ava is best medicine for patients

BY GREG WILLIAMS Sentinel reporter gwilliams@lewistownsentinel.com

LEWISTOWN – The way patients and staff recognize Ava, a patient therapy dog at Geisinger-Lewistown Hospital, you would think she’s a rock star and not a four-legged friend.

“They see us coming and they all say, ‘Here comes Ava,’” says her handler, Jean Swartz. “I don’t really think many of them know my name.”

Swartz laughs it off. In the bigger picture, the good the two are doing outweighs the fact that the pet gets more recognition than its owner.

“We can see we really make a difference,” Swartz said. “It really depends on if they’re a dog person. If they have a dog at home and they might be missing it, I think it’s very rewarding.

“I think she’s doing what she’s supposed to be doing,” she added.

Geisinger-Lewistown Hospital Volunteer Director Kylle White agreed, “Ava had a special calling and is an amazing therapy dog. Everyone at the hospital just loves having Jean and Ava come visit.”

Swartz was supposed to prepare Ava to be a seeing-eye dog. “I asked for a golden retriever,” said Swartz, who has raised other dogs including German shepherds and Labrador retrievers. “I got her at seven weeks. We’d go on all kinds of outings to places where they might go as guide dogs.”

When Ava turned nine weeks, however, a feral cat on Swartz’s farm clawed Ava’s eye, injuring it so severely that it couldn’t be saved. That disability prevented Ava from continuing as a prospective guide dog.

Swartz decided to adopt Ava and took her to obedience classes. “We went so she would be good to take out to people,” Swartz said.

Ava passed several tests to become certified as a therapy dog. “He took me out to a couple of different stores and watched how she reacted to people and her manners,” Swartz said of the certification process with the tester. “Ava has to be certified to go to the hospital then there was training at the hospital.”

No doggone test was going to stop this pup as Ava passed with flying colors.

Now 2 ½ years old, Jean and Ava will be part of another staff program currently in development at Geisinger. The duo will visit with staff – along with a nurse – who might be experiencing a stressful time or another issue.

“They’ll talk to the nurse, but Ava and I will go to break the ice,” Swartz said.

Ava will be the last dog that the 79-year-old Swartz will raise as she is retiring from puppy parenting. She raised previous pups with

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Continued from Page 4 her sons and two granddaughters. “They’re all grown up now,” she said. “I’ve raised a few on my own, but it wasn’t near as much fun without the kids.”

Her family has raised more than 30 seeing-eye dogs growing up since the 1990s. “We give them back and they train them to be seeing-eye dogs,” Swartz said of working with The Seeing Eye in Morristown, N.J., a philanthropic organization who helps blind people by finding them a trained guide dog.