Better than any pill, a hospital visit from a pet

WITH tears in her eyes, Mrs Reid pleaded: ‘ Please don’t kill him.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ i replied, hardly able to look at her. A nurse held her hand and tried to comfort her.

‘He’s been my entire world for 14 years. i don’t know what i’ll do without him,’ she sobbed.

She wasn’t talking about a person. She was talking about Toby, her King Charles spaniel.

Mrs Reid had come into hospital after a fall. She had Parkinson’s and her mobility was deteriorating — it was the second time she’d fallen in just a few weeks, and this time she had broken her hip.

She was too frail to go home and the social workers had arranged for her to go into residential care.

A neighbour had been looking after Toby but, with the prospect of Mrs Reid not going home and no family who could take him, it seemed he would have to be put down.

Mrs Reid was pleading with me to allow her home, but it was simply too dangerous, although for her this was preferable to no longer having her beloved Toby.

Recently published research found that each year thousands of dogs are destroyed because their owners go into care homes. More than 100,000 have to be rehomed.

Thankfully, i spoke to a kindly social worker who eventually found a home for Mrs Reid that would allow her to take Toby.

BUT such places are few and far between and this all seems so profoundly wrong. We have a remarkable capacity to draw comfort from animals. And there are a fair few of us, i suspect, who actually prefer our pets to a good number of our fellow humans.

For older people such as Mrs Reid, pets are often the primary source of companionship and about a quarter of all pensioners have a pet. Yet when they go into hospital or a care home, they are denied this vital relationship.

This week the Royal College of nursing said it thought pets should be able to visit their owners in hospital, on the basis that they help patients recover quicker and it encourages them to be active.

i’m all for this. i have worked on several wards where ‘PAT’ (Pets As Therapy) dogs visited, and seen the change they can bring.

it’s remarkable how patients suddenly come out of themselves, smile and laugh when a dog nuzzles them. it’s more effective than any antidepressant and encourages people out of their seats better than any physiotherapist. imagine the benefits, after a lengthy hospital stay, if it were your own dog that visited.

i’m not suggesting hospital wards should be full of mutts running amok, nor that dogs should be allowed in intensive care. But it’s quite reasonable, especially on rehab and long-stay wards, to let visitors bring patients’ pets in, if those pets are well behaved.

Yes, i know: health and safety. But this argument is the refuge of the terminally unimaginative. And trust me, on a ward there are more things that pose a risk to your health than a dog — the MRSA on a nurse’s hands, for example.

THERE is not a scrap of evidence that a dog would be an infection risk, and plenty of evidence of health benefits.

A review of all the research, conducted by Queen’s University Belfast, found that pet owners tended to be healthier, including having lower blood pressure. Dog owners, in particular, were found to have fewer minor ailments and serious medical problems.

The researchers found that pets are often ‘vital to elderly people’s quality of life’ and having to move to accommodation without their pet was highly traumatic.

One has to ask how healthy and safe it is to put residents through that. We would never consider denying people human visits, so why ban canine ones?

The U.S., France, norway and Switzerland have laws forcing housing providers to accept elderly residents’ pets; in the UK 70 per cent of care homes ban them. Humanity, not misguided health and safety, should prevail.