Students from OSU Lima interact with Brienne a team member of Buckeye Paws.
Dean Brown | The Lima News
LIMA — Buckeye Paws made a visit to the OSU-Lima campus.
Brienne is a five-year old Yellow Labrador Retriever named after Brienne of Tarth, a Game of Thrones character. Brienne was born January 21, 2017. Her best friend is her fur brother, Henry, and her favorite treat is pineapple. Brienne’s handler is Beth Steinberg, currently a nurse researcher at the OSU Wexner Medical Center for Integrative Health. Brienne has been in the Buckeye Paws program for a little over three years.
Buckeye Paws’ dogs typically start with a temperament test. It allows the trainer to establish a baseline for further instruction. That is followed by basic obedience tests, specific therapy dog training and advanced instruction that introduces the dogs to the medical environment. “They’re doing their training around a lot of commotion – treats on the floor, walkers, wheelchairs, monitor beeps. Then they have to learn to ride on an escalator,” said Steinberg. The program has a certified master trainer. After performing three rounds of observation in the field, the trainer will certify the dogs for the program. Then the master trainer puts dogs and handlers through quarterly training. There were 33 dogs recently at the French Field House on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus going through refresher school.
Steinberg, one of the originators of the program, said, “Buckeye Paws is trained as a team. We have to be a medical center or OSU employee. It is a peer support program. So everybody has another job; we volunteer our time to do this.”
The Buckeye Paws started at the Wexner Medical Center just before COVID. During COVID, some dog owners who worked at the hospital reached out to the College of Veterinary Science Dean Rustin Moore. Moore put them in touch with two epidemiology veterinarians who confirmed dogs couldn’t spread COVID. There is a process where dogs are sanitized after each visit. Strict guidelines for hygiene and cleanliness are enforced. The only problem occurring during COVID was that showing up with a dog would gather a lot of people to the dog and cancel out social distancing.
“All of the handlers are trained in trauma-informed care, psychological first aid or brief emotional support training. So we know how to respond to people that are having difficulties with anxiety, depression and things like that,” Steinberg shared. “I did not think we would need it for students until I sat with a synchronized swimmer for hours. She cried as she held Brienne.”
The Buckeye Paws program was developed specifically for to help faculty and staff with their distress and resilience. So the program is really focused on mental health and well-being, not so much for patients, but for faculty and staff. Kristina M. Johnson, PhD, the 16th president of The Ohio State University, asked to move the program onto campus to be the cornerstone of the mental health and well-being initiative. The response was phenomenal. When the dogs were introduced at the Ohio Union on the oval, the next day there were 240 requests for visits.
Lima is the first OSU branch campus visited by the program.
Steinberg said, “When students come to campus and see the dogs, they are thrilled because many of them have pets at home that they’re missing. You also have a lot of students who this is their first time really being away from home. They’re very anxious and stressed. A dog just provides a few moments of comfort to have a furry, non-judgmental friend.”
Reach Dean Brown at 567-242-0409
