This Dynamic Duo Makes a Winning Team
This gentle animal with an affectionate disposition is getting amazing results in the serious business of helping children with mild to severe disabilities as they learn how to increase their physical skills in order to lead as normal a life as possible. Take patient Jacob Vovin, or Yasha as his family affectionately calls him. His nickname comes from his Russian heritage on his father’s side in honor of his grandfather. He’s a very bright boy, age 4 1/2, and speaks fluent Japanese and English, which he gets from his mother who is bilingual. Yasha was born with a form of muscular dystrophy known as spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA. It is a neuromuscular disease affecting voluntary muscles used for walking, crawling, head and neck control, and swallowing. It affects about one in 6,000 babies, and one in 40 persons is a genetic carrier.
“The objective for physical therapy is to increase Yasha’s strength, balance, and coordination,” explains Yim. Yasha has worked with Tucker for most of this year and has greatly improved his motor skills. Sambi adds, “He couldn’t jump before therapy, and now he can jump forward about 12 inches without falling. He also can walk much better and rarely falls.” Yim says the key to Tucker’s success is that he motivates children. Instead of just performing regular exercises, Tucker makes them fun. “Therapy becomes play. It’s no longer work, and the kids look forward to coming in for their sessions. When they arrive, they ask, ‘Is Tucker here?’” Yim has observed that therapy is also more functional with the canine caregiver around. For example, it is one thing for Yasha to improve his strength and flexibility by performing exercises, but it is another, much more fun experience to work on arm strengthening and balance while playing catch with Tucker.
Sambi can’t say enough about this dynamic team. “At the very first visit, Kelly [Yim] said Yasha’s weakness was unusual and that it appeared to be more than just a developmental delay,” explains Sambi. Through Yim’s perseverance, the family saw additional specialists and received a definitive answer — it was SMA. Oftentimes, the condition is misdiagnosed, and treatment is delayed. “Kelly even came in on her day off to sit with us for hours at the doctor’s appointments. I don’t know where we would be now if it wasn’t for her. She does it from her heart. She is extraordinary,” says Sambi. Who can benefit from physical therapy?Most children are not suffering from severe disabilities, and their problems may not be readily apparent. Yim says that it’s important for parents to monitor their child’s development. Parents can get age-appropriate developmental checklists from their doctor. She says it’s also important to see how your son or daughter performs relative to their classmates. That’s how Yasha’s problem came to light. His teacher noticed he was falling behind.
Yim offers parents some signs to watch for, including tripping, falling frequently, poor endurance, clumsiness, and difficulty climbing stairs or walking. Yim says these are all clues. Parents are often the first to notice and should discuss any concerns with their child’s doctor. Parents play an important role in the success of their child’s treatment. Often, children will come in once a week for physical therapy. Parents are responsible for continuing treatment ideas at home. In Yasha’s case, Yim teaches Sambi the exercises, which she repeats at home. For example, Yasha and Sambi practice stair climbing. Prior to therapy, Yasha couldn’t climb stairs. Instead, he would pull himself up by holding on to the railings. Now he can climb a few steps on his own without any assistance. A gift for Hawaii’s childrenKapi‘olani received Tucker as a donation from Hawaii Canines for Independence (HCI), a Maui-based non-profit that provides service dogs for all the Islands. HCI founder Maureen Maurer says she was delighted to donate Tucker “to the children of Hawaii” because as a child, she was in a hospital on and off for three years.HCI put Tucker through rigorous health and temperament screenings and spent more than a year training him how to work with patients, including teaching him more than 70 commands. Tucker gets regular work “breaks,” and he has evenings and weekends off. He goes home with Ellie Taft-Reinebold, a supervisor in the Kapi‘olani Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to play with her husband and two children. Yim looks forward to continuing development of Kapi‘olani’s Animal Assisted Therapy Program. Dogs like Tucker were not part of her formal training, but she says it’s becoming a trend. The most rewarding part is to see one of her kids leave the program, performing activities he or she couldn’t do before, catching up with his or her peers, or performing at his or her highest potential. “It’s so much fun to see Yasha now. We remain hopeful as we see him get stronger. He can do so much more and can join in with the kids at school. My husband and I feel very fortunate that we met Kelly,” says Sambi. |
Many doctors and nurses have an engaging
bedside manner, but Tucker is a therapy
dog who can put a smile on a patient’s
face faster than anyone at Kapi‘olani
Medical Center for Women & Children.
Tucker is a 2-year-old golden retriever who
started working in the Physical Therapy
department of Kapi‘olani Rehabilitation
Services earlier this year. And at his side
is Kapi‘olani Physical Therapist Kelly Yim
who has undergone special training to
learn how to put Tucker through his paces
with kids.
“Yasha could walk but he was very
weak and had difficulty, falling about
every ten steps,” says Yasha’s mother
Sambi.
Kapi‘olani Medical Center has sponsored
pet visits in the past, but Tucker’s job
description is significantly different. He is
on duty five days a week. He even makes
daily visits to seriously ill children who
must spend weeks in the hospital.
“The sooner the problem is identified,
the better. We can begin therapy
before the child falls very far behind
and before he or she forms bad movement
patterns to compensate for areas
of weakness,” says Yim.
