SAN ANTONIO – Meet Marcus! He is one of the most in-demand staff members at the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio.
Since he joined the staff in November, the hospital’s full-time, in-house therapy dog visits several patients and staff a day and prescribes lots of love.
”Marcus just has a way of connecting with the patients and with their families and helping bring some joy and to bring some distractions during this time that has been so tough for everyone,” Allison Sharawi, facility dog coordinator for Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, said.
Marcus’ job is pretty simple but very important. He’s there to just sit or lay in your lap and give you lots of love and snuggles.
”Research has shown they lower heart rate-- they lower blood pressure, they distract from any pain and anxiety that a patient or family member might be having,” Sharawi said.
The hospital used to have several more outside volunteer therapy dogs, however when the pandemic struck, those volunteer visits came to a halt. When Marcus joined the staff, many precautions were taken, like only visiting patients who have negative covid tests and not visiting any patients with viral or contagious illnesses.
”Just to protect Marcus, to protect all the rest of our patients and families and staff as well to keep everyone healthy,” Sharawi said.
Marcus has also played a vital role in de-stressing medical staff who have had an extremely stressful year with the pandemic... it’s why Allison hopes they can have more therapy dogs in house in the near future.
”Demand here is already high; everyone wants to see Marcus,” Sharawi said. “He’s so popular just because he does such an amazing job, so we hope to grow our program and add more dogs to our team.”
Allison is Marcus’ handler and at the end of the day, Marcus goes home with Allison where he gets to be a normal dog. Allison says he enjoys playing with toys and barking at squirrels.