Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. (October 31, 2024) – This morning, the doctors and nurses at Sharp Memorial Hospital had special door-to-door visitors, showing off their cutest tricks and treats. Helen Woodward Animal Center’s Pet Encounter Therapy(PET) pets decided to be a Halloween treat of their own by making a visit to help heal the souls of medical staff who dedicate their lives to healing our community each day, a job that can carry a heavy stress-load. Doctors, nurses, and medical staff were all smiles as they interacted with the pets – goodies even sweeter than the very best Halloween candy.
Helen Woodward Animal Center’s Pet Encounter Therapy is, in essence, “cuddle therapy.” The program brings unconditional love and tactile benefits of animals to patients inside skilled nursing facilities, children’s shelters, hospitals, psychiatric units and many more. The basis of the important therapy stems from studies showing that holding and caressing an animal provides benefits such as relaxation, lower blood pressure, improved long- and short-term memory, and sensory stimuli.
The Center’s PET animals provided invaluable cuddle therapy to our local healthcare heroes whose daily stresses and emotional job fatigue is often overlooked. The kind cuddle of a furry friend, is not only the sweetest treat around but has been credited with incredible health benefits including lowering blood pressure, decreasing anxiety, and increasing positivity.
Helen Woodward Animal Center PET Program Specialist Robin Cohen put it best. “Seeing these amazing nurses and doctors break out in a huge smile and finally take a deep breath, sit down and run their fingers through the fur of our therapy animals, is the best treat I could hope to offer them.”
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About Helen Woodward Animal Center
Helen Woodward Animal Center is a private, non-profit organization where “people help animals and animals help people.” Founded in 1972 in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., the Center provides services for more than 90,000 people and more than 10,000 animals annually through adoptions, educational and therapeutic programs both onsite and throughout the community. Helen Woodward Animal Center is also the creator of the International Home 4 the Holidays pet adoption drive, the International Remember Me Thursday® campaign and The Business of Saving Lives Workshops, teaching the business of saving lives to animal welfare leaders from around the world. For more information, go to: https://animalcenter.org.
