Animal Assisted Intervention

We provide Animal Assisted Intervention services at Southampton Children's Hospital. We visit all the wards including the paediatric intensive care unit.  Our dogs temperaments shine in these visits where they meet different people every time they go.  

Lyndsey is one of the authors of the Royal College of Nursing Working with Dogs in Healthcare Settings document and advises other teams regularly on best practice.  She holds the Certificate for Animal Assisted Therapy, Activity and Learning from the Institute for Human Animal Connection at the University of Denver. 

We are regulars at healthcare conferences where the work of the Southampton Children's Hospital therapy dogs is a very popular feature and have published a paper in the British Journal of Nursing. We are currently involved in a Masters research project with the paediatric intensive care team to assess for physiological, psychological and microbiological responses to our visits. Our Southampton Children’s Hospital team are members of Animal Assisted Intervention International.

In 2020 Leo was named the Kennel Club Friends for Life Child's Champion having been nominated for the award by the intensive care team at Southampton Children's Hospital.  While he heads up the team, the volunteer service we provide could not be offered with only one dog and handler.  All six dogs in the team are from the same Golden Retriever family and the team sees 2500 patients a year.  Leo & Friends - the extraordinary dogs with the healing touch is our book about what we do, published by Harper Collins, UK - August 2021.

There are also LOTS of images and videos showing what we do on our news page…