Rochester Post Bulletin
04/10/2006

Pets play role in comfort, healing

By Mike Dougherty
mdougherty@postbulletin.com

Linda Harper always valued her pets and their companionship, but when her father developed a terminal illness, she saw firsthand the value of a pet.

The clinical psychologist from Chicago watched the role dogs played as her dad spent his final days on earth. They utilized hospice care and the dogs played a strong role in helping him be comfortable.

"We have gifts we can give and we just need to follow our hearts, because we never know where it will lead us, if we let it," Harper said, during a visit in Rochester on Friday to speak at Seasons Hospice's Lunch and Learn event for volunteers.

Harper said "Babe," the family's yellow Labrador retriever died unexpectedly two months before Harper's father. So the family went to German Shephard rescue organization and found "Fritzy," a dog that she described as "my Dad's dream come true, his favorite kind of dog." Fritzy seemed to sense his role in the care of her father, she said.

The experience prompted Harper to start Blessed Bonds, a nonprofit organization that coordinates volunteers to help provide foster care for pets of people who might be needing long-term rehabilitation after surgery or an illness. Her organization has 20-25 volunteers, but she said "we could use 25 more." They currently operate in the Chicago area.

But the need is everywhere, she says.

"We get calls from all over the country to assist in helping," she says. "We'd like to see others do the same thing."

She noted her organization had just sought care for a person who was going to seek treatment at Myo Clinic and would be gone for a month.

What Blessed Bonds does is help provide a good foster home for a pet while the owner is unable to care for the pet, eventually returning the animal to its owner to reunite the pair as they were.