Lyndsey Uglow - Leo & Friends: The Dogs with a Healing Touch

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

FIRST EDITION

Lyndsey Uglow 2021

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Source ISBN: 9780008466541

Ebook Edition: August 2021 ISBN: 9780008466558

Version: 2021-06-24

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Kennel Club Friends for Life 2020 winners Lyndsey and her therapy dog Leo represent everything there is to say about the powerful healing bond that exists between dogs and children.

Thanks to Lyndseys pioneering work with therapy dogs, her team have helped more than 10,000 children, many critically ill, and their families at Southampton Childrens Hospital; the healing value of Animal Assisted Intervention (AAI) is recognised by the Royal College of Nursing.

Wife, mother and daughter, Lyndsey has made this journey having endured and overcome her own mental health challenges and personal pain along the way.

Through the shadows of post-natal depression, loneliness in motherhood and the desperation of her young sons battle with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, Lyndsey knows only too well the emotional rollercoaster experienced by parents, especially those supporting their children through critical illness and long hospital stays.

The healing bond with dogs that helped her, Lyndsey now shares with others in the shape of a dynasty of exceptional golden retrievers. Including the incredible Leo Lyndseys hero on four paws.

For Mike, Harry and Ollie,

my family and friends, human and canine.

With thanks for your love and support.

Dogs our healing companions.

I love dogs.

As a self-confessed dog lover and admirer, it was an honour and a pleasure to present Lyndsey and Leo with the Kennel Club Friends for Life winners trophy in March 2020. I felt an immediate affinity with all that Lyndsey and her team are achieving in terms of Animal Assisted Intervention at Southampton Childrens Hospital because to me, Leo and his canine friends represent all the good that can be found in the human-animal bond. All those patients lives touched and enhanced by the presence of a dog all that pure love and kindness on four legs.

On a personal level, I am pleased and proud to admit that my dogs have, in their own unique way, saved my life in my darkest hours. Ella, Zulu, Inka, Luna and Mabel are, I think, completely unaware of their gift to me but every day I want to tell them how deeply I appreciate the power of their unconditional love and companionship during my own battle with mental health and anxiety.

The warm light of kindness is present throughout this book and I can tell you right now that welcoming a dog into your life is like letting in sunshine; your world is immediately warmer and brighter. I say this because my appreciation of Animal Assisted Intervention came as I gradually realised any glimmers of light that I had encountered on my mental health journey came in the hours spent with my dogs. Somehow, I had been unable to find the right words to express my fears to my loving family, but my canine companions simply understood me no words required.

I find it ironic that Winston Churchill named his depression the black dog as it was my ever-faithful black spaniel, Ella, who showed me the way out of my darkness. Forever by my side, reading my emotions and body language, she accompanied me to all my therapy sessions and consistently distracted me from my sometimes crippling anxiety and feelings of isolation. I imagine thats how it must be for the children visited by Lyndsey and Leo they feel an invisible connection through the dogs silent understanding.

Im not ashamed to say that in the beginning Ella probably knew me better than I knew myself and it was my therapeutic bond with her that led to my association with the charity Pets As Therapy (PAT). I can see now that Lyndsey and I had a similar journey discovering the charity and in both wanting our dogs to be PAT-assessed as soon as possible, so that we could go out and share that treasured canine love and support with others. Now, as a PAT Ambassador, I have the pleasure of seeing first-hand how a dogs company can be a massive support at the most challenging of times, including in hospitals, schools and care homes.

What Lyndsey started in 2012 as a Pets As Therapy volunteer has transcended into the Animal Assisted Intervention service that she and her team of volunteers now provide at Southampton Childrens Hospital. Many of us will have a period of hospitalisation at some point in our lives and at that time everyone is likely to feel vulnerable. A visit from a therapy dog can ease those feelings.

In my experience dogs can be a powerful intervention in our lives, as the patients stories in this book prove without a shadow of a doubt. The potential of the human-animal bond is, I think, there for us to explore and nurture and never take for granted. I, for one, will always be grateful for the dogs who have come into my life and helped me to understand, and who continue to walk beside me to support my mental recovery.

I believe that dogs teach us our worth in the love they give so freely and unconditionally. No wonder that, however long they are with us for life, a visit, a moment at a hospital bedside they leave behind a beautiful, indelible paw print on our heart.

James Middleton

PAT Ambassador and Mental Health Advocate

I knew dogs could make a difference to the childrens lives. I knew it the moment I watched a child, exhausted by pain and sickness, stretch out his hand to touch my dogs paw. And then the smiles.

Every time I see that connection between a dog and a child in hospitals, in hospices and homes, I know that Im privileged to be witnessing a little bit of canine magic.

One Sunday night

Lyndsey, can you bring in one of your dogs? Theres a girl here in intensive care and we cant rouse her. She is eight years old and just had a resection of a brain tumour. She has no family or caregivers with her and we have successfully taken her off the ventilator but shes not even opened her eyes she looks sad. I wondered what we could do to help her as nothing seems to be working and I thought of the therapy dogs. Weve talked to her about Leo and she has at least nodded. Can we tell her that youll come in?