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New dog spreading love and cheer to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta patients
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta has a hardworking new employee whose main job involves cuddles and pets. Her name is Marvel, and the golden retriever is the first ever facility dog at the Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital in Downtown Atlanta.
ATLANTA - Children's Healthcare of Atlanta has a hardworking new employee whose main job involves cuddles and pets. Her name is Marvel, and the golden retriever is the first-ever facility dog at the Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital in Downtown Atlanta.
Charise Holt is a project manager at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. She is also Marvel's primary handler.
"And then what we do with Ms. Marvel, she gets to visit all of those areas. So whenever the kids come in for appointments or unexpected visits she can go into the rooms, she can cuddle with them in their beds, and she can do little small visits if they don't like a big fluffy dog in their beds. They can just pet her head if they'd like," Holt said.
It's a little moment for the patients that can go a long way.
"The idea is to bring something familiar. So when you come to the hospital you have doctors and nurses and stethoscopes, but when you see a dog that's something familiar. That's something from home." she said.
Marvel will work at the hospital full-time alongside Holt. She will also come to special events on evenings and weekends to visit with children and their families.
It's a job she's been training for her entire life.
"So as soon as she was born, she was brought into hospitals, she was put on a little harness vest, and so she's been around the sounds, the wheelchairs. She's been taught to get up in the beds, in the chairs, and she's used to all the pets and rubs while she's here." Holt said.
She's already been a hit with the patients, their families, and the staff too.
"Her very first visit with a kid was a little 2-year-old who got down on the floor. He was waiting to go see the doctor, so he got down on the floor with her and started rubbing her little head and her eyes, and her ears, and he just said, ‘This is the best,’" she said.
Holt said Marvel embodies what their main goal is at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
"She's here to help, she's here to bring comfort, and support, and happiness, and joy. Children's is known for being that warm and friendly environment, and by having facility dogs here like Marvel, especially here at Hughes, for the first time, she really helps to embody that." Holt said.
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Scottish Rite Hospital also welcomed its own facility dog named Blanche. The golden retriever will be working with children in the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.