Volunteer Animal Assisted Therapy
Animal Assisted Therapy at Baptist Health Louisville is provided through our partnership with WAGS. The Wonderful Animals Giving Support volunteer’s started in the hospital in late 1999 and have been making “paw-sitive” impacts on patients, staff and visitors ever since.
WAGS members apply to Volunteer at Baptist Health Louisville, and once onboarding is completed are then added to a team. The WAGS Volunteer Teams at our hospital consist of 1-4 handlers with their dogs and trained aides for support. We have Teams assigned to almost every inpatient unit that visit at least once a month. Patients can also request visits from the WAGS Therapy Dogs for unscheduled visits, too! Every time a team is here they show how committed WAGS is to providing support to people through the loving interactions of animals. We currently have over a dozen therapy dogs in our program. Check them out below:
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| Benee | Edith Mae | Finn | Frankie |
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| Jessi | Leo | Maggie | Patches |
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| Penny | Ruby | Stella | Teddy |
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| Toby | Yogi |
Linda Laun, a founder of WAGS Pet Therapy of Kentucky, Inc. and one of the first two teams that started visiting at Baptist said, “Over our 22+ years volunteering at Baptist we have seen thousands of patients and staff and shared the special love that our dogs give so willingly. These are special dogs, doing work that no one else can do in the same way that they do. I know we have made a positive difference in the lives of 1000’s of Baptist patients and staff. What could be better than that?”