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In the Loop: Sometimes the best medicine has four legs and fur
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Mayo Clinic team members are known for their caring spirit, and the four-legged members are no exception. That's why Mayo's Caring Canines dog therapy program is often exactly what the doctor orders.
There were many faces in the crowd waiting for ice cream at Thursdays on First, Rochester's summertime market and music festival. But Beau only had eyes for one of them. Then just a year old, Beau walked up to a woman in a wheelchair and laid his head on her feet. "He looked up at her, pretty much asking her to pet him," Salma Bydon says of Beau, her Portuguese water dog. "Everyone in line for ice cream laughed." Including the woman in the wheelchair, who was in Rochester — and away from her own beloved pets — to receive treatment at Mayo Clinic.
"Beau's affection was a good dose of a different kind of medicine," Salma says. "The fact that Beau went up to this patient, confidently but gently, showed me he had a special gift." Salma's husband, Mohamad Bydon, M.D., a neurologic surgeon at Mayo Clinic, agreed, and the couple decided to take Beau through training to become part of Mayo Clinic's Caring Canines Therapy Dog program. Read the rest of the story.
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This story originally appeared on the In the Loop blog.
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