Buckeye Paws is celebrating its one-year anniversary Saturday and has doubled the amount of service dogs it employs.
The organization provides therapy dogs for medical staff at university hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the majority of therapy dog programs are patient-focused. After observing patient interactions with the dogs Beth Steinberg, co-founder of the organization, said she and her fellow co-founder, Mary Justice, began wondering what would happen if the staff had access to therapy dogs.
“You’ve got patients who may be having a very difficult day, but that translates into the staff having a really difficult day,” Justice said. “So, we wanted to be that intervention. We wanted to be right there and able to help them through that.”
