New facility dog helps patients and parents at Stollery Children’s Hospital

Edmonton’s Stollery Children’s Hospital is celebrating a new hire — Pumbaa. The facility dog is making the rounds to help children and their families through their hospital stay.

“Our son, at 8 months of age, was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic condition called ERCC1 Deficiency. It’s very rare, it’s the first in Canada, only 11 have been diagnosed with this condition, and unfortunately, it is life-limiting,” said Mathew Davis, a parent of a child in the Stollery Children’s Hospital.

Davis says that the genetic condition made his four-year-old son Jake more susceptible to other illnesses. Jake was diagnosed with a form of liver cancer and needed a transplant earlier this year. This meant a lot of time in and out of the hospital.

“We went through different candidates on who could donate their liver, and it ended up being that my wife was the perfect candidate, the best match. So our journey was really unique with both my wife and my son going in, her donating a portion of her liver, and my son is getting a portion of that,” Davis explained.

Davis says he and his family have been at the Stollery since mid-August, but will be heading home south to Calgary at the end of the month.

He says part of what helped Jake through his journey at the hospital was one of their newest hires, a two-year-old yellow lab retriever named Pumbaa, a facility dog helping children and parents through their hospital stay. 

“So, to have an opportunity to have a dog like Pumbaa be there and give them that hope and give them that distraction during a traumatic event, really does impact their experience here. And we see that with our son. He’s not afraid to come back to the hospital. He’s not afraid to get certain procedures. There will be times where he’ll say to Pumbaa, ‘don’t be scared’ when he’s getting blood drawn,” Davis explained.

“We met Pumbaa when Jake was still in the intensive care unit,” said Jake’s mom, Ashley. “Pumbaa would come lie beside Jake, and Jake was just touching his paw. And then slowly, as Jake became more mobile with the help of physiotherapy, they started to be able to play together on the floor and then walk together. Pumbaa has been a big part of Jake’s therapy. He can convince Jake to do things that all the adults in the room can’t.”

Pumbaa was trained by a local charity, Dogs with Wings Assistance Dog Society. They say Pumbaa is the first dedicated child life services dog in Canada.

“It has amazed me; it has re-ignited my passion for this job. I’ve been here 19 years,” said Angela Mark, with Child Life Services at the Stollery Children’s Hospital.

“Pumbaa has a unique way of connecting with kids, bringing smiles and calm during some of their most difficult moments,” Mark added. “Dogs have an amazing ability to provide comfort in a way humans can’t, and we’re already seeing Pumbaa make a big difference, simply by being present.”

Facility dogs are different from therapy or service dogs, as they are trained to work in clinical settings.

They provide emotional support, bringing a calming and comforting presence; physical support, helping with therapy goals, such as going for walks in the hospital; and procedural support, helping children prepare for medical interventions.

Mark handles Pumbaa at work, telling media at the Stollery on Thursday that she and her colleagues went through a six-month try-out period with different dogs and an intensive training course with Dogs with Wings before Pumbaa got the job. 

“We come in the morning, we check our emails, if there’s a child who’s really scared to move after surgery — Pumbaa and I can come in with physio and get that child up, and they can take Pumbaa for a walk,” Mark explained.

But for Davis, he’d like to see the program expanded for other families with children in the hospital. 

“If we could clone Pumbaa and have a thousand of them, I would say let’s do it.”

-With files from Darcy Ropchan