MADEIRA, Ohio — At her assisted-living facility, Beverly Groene walks a few laps every day.
“I have to keep my knees moving,” Groene said. “Because they don’t like me anymore.”
She fell recently, and that’s why she’s using a walker — one with Mardi Gras beads hanging from the handle. She tells me it’s a new one and starts looking around the room for it. Then, she laughs.
“Oh, I’m sitting on it,” Groene said. “This is how bad it is.”
But it’s not all bad. Because Groene is sitting on that walker petting a 6-year-old collie from the dog daycare down the street.
“Come and see me,” Groene said. “I won’t bite you. I promise.”
Watch a special dog visit in the video below:
Last year, staff at Central Bark began bringing dogs to visit residents at Traditions at Camargo.
“When we brought them up to memory care, they would get swarmed as soon as they walked in the door,” said Rebecca Thompson, the community relations director at the assisted-living facility. “It was an instant hit.”
Groene says she doesn’t live in the memory care unit, but her husband died in October after being diagnosed with dementia. She had moved here with him.
“Alzheimer’s is a terrible, terrible disease,” Groene said.
The dogs help people like her husband remember. Remember the animals they once had. And remember the past.
“When you’ve grown up and you’ve had animals your entire life — then they’re not there anymore — that creates a void,” Thompson said. “We want to help fill that void.”
On this day, the void is filled by a dog named Asha.
“She got brushed extra good just to come see you guys,” said Hannah Kraly, the social media and marketing coordinator at Central Bark.
Kraly tells me they visit once a month. And this time, a resident tells her about a dog she had during the war. And how it tripped her uncle, leading her to hear words she’d never heard before.
Kraly has heard this story before. And she laughs all the same.
“Every time we walk in the room, everybody’s faces light up,” Kraly said. “It just warms my heart.”
