Therapy dogs make a difference in people’s lives
St. John Ambulance
March 17, 2025, 2:22 pm
Ashley Bochek
St. John Ambulance offers a Therapy Dog program across Saskatchewan, including in Moosomin.
Lisa Schwann, the director of Community Services for St. John Ambulance in Saskatchewan, explains the importance of the Therapy Dog program in Saskatchewan that offers people in need support from furry friends.
The interview follows:
Tell me about St. John Ambulance and the therapy dog program.
We go way back. St. John Ambulance is an international organization—not just Canadian. We are worldwide, which a lot of people don’t know. We are the oldest charitable organization in the world. We go back to literally the year 1000 something in the crusades where we provided first aid on the battlefields to anybody. We go back a long way and people don’t know that. We are terrible at spreading our story because so much of what we do—for example, therapy dog and first aid services—is all confidential and private so we can’t advertise and talk about it that much.
In Saskatchewan, we started the therapy dog program in 2006 and then we started going out and around communities with visitations in 2007. Our whole purpose is to support communities across Canada and enhance health and well-being through community service. So even though we are Saskatchewan teams we do venture outside the province when they need help and assistance. Our community service and volunteers are out there to improve the quality of life in different care facilities. We are not just in the big centres, we are in Moosomin, Nokomis, Prince Albert, Yorkton, Estevan, Moose Jaw, Regina, and Saskatoon. Obviously, Regina and Saskatoon are our biggest units, but we are spreading out all over Saskatchewan.
How does the therapy dog program work?
For all therapy dogs there is a team—the handler and the dog—and they’re all tested and evaluated to be a therapy dog team. You have to apply to get into our program and then we do interviews and three different evaluations and if you pass all of that then you become a therapy dog team that we constantly monitor to make sure everything is okay and that the dogs are being checked by a vet every year and make sure you have your criminal record and vulnerable sector check every year, stuff like that to make sure everybody is safe. We visit so many different people that are vulnerable we have to make sure that everybody is safe.
Our main mission is to promote wellness and alleviate isolation which is huge for senior homes and care facilities. We provide essential comfort to basically whoever needs it. So people will send in a request to us and we will send it out to our team to see who can cover it. That is either on a regular schedule or on a one-time stop, sometimes businesses might have us in for conventions or for wellness weeks—we have been doing more and more of that as businesses and people recognize the importance of people’s mental health and in the workplace, so it is cool.
How is the program funded?
We are a non-profit charitable organization, and we rely on donations to run, and we have people who take our classes, and all the money from those classes go 100 per cent back into the communities, but we need government support and people to donate because if not, we can’t run our community service programs. We are in everything from hospitals, in senior residences and care facilities, vaccination clinics, big schools, universities, and all high schools who request us to come in, and community events. Our therapy dogs are out in the community every single time they need. At hospitals our dogs are there every day and at multiple wards in the hospital and we have been doing that since 2006 without any funding. Last year, we got a bit of funding from the General Hospital in pediatrics, but we need help because we can’t expand or continue without financial assistance.
Do you think it makes a difference?
People benefit physically and mentally from petting and seeing our therapy dogs. It is the unconditional love from a dog you cannot get from anything else. It is a really unique experience for the dogs that love it and our handlers that love sharing their family dog with other people with them in the community.
We have 140 therapy dogs in the province of Saskatchewan, but if there are any emergencies we do try to help as we can. For example, during the Humboldt Bus Crash we were there in the hospital with the kids and the families. We go back every year and visit the hospital. We usually have a mental health convention we go to every year there too and some of the families and billets will come and visit. One of the worst things about emergencies is after it is over people feel forgotten, so we make a point of going back just so they don’t feel forgotten.
Manitoba needed assistance in the Carberry bus crash so I brought a team of therapy dogs with me, and we went for week for the families and the senior communities that were affected by that, and we still maintain communication with those guys today and we are quite close to Dauphin.
We do wildfire evacuations all the time as well. When they evacuated to Saskatoon and Regina a few years ago we were there providing comfort for those guys. Suicides as well we are there in senior homes or facilities and hospitals too. We are part of the treatment plans at hospitals—therapy dogs—they are actually written in the treatment plan. Whether it be the oncology units, mental health units, or addiction centres that have asked—we are a regular part of their therapy and I saw everything from the emotional support to the mental health support and physical benefits from petting a dog—there is well documented of physical benefits. I can tell you about the social interaction and companionship it goes on and on, the benefits of a therapy dog.
Do you have volunteers in those communities, or do they come out from the city?
Moosomin, Nokomis, PA, Moose Jaw, and so on all have teams there. Some go every day to different facilities in the community. Wolseley requested a therapy dog team to come for visitation and it costs a lot of money in gas to go there and back, and we can’t go unless we are somehow funded to go out there.
I did go out there on my way to Moosomin because we regularly check our teams—so I drove out to Moosomin and my dog, Dexter, came with me and we stopped in at the Wolseley integrated health facility there and spent a couple hours there and then continued on to Moosomin.
We try to build it in so if people request it and they were really good at Wolseley—that we would try to get them in when we can and if they can try to make a donation that would be great and if you can’t that is okay too. We are all about serving the community.
What does your day-to-day schedule look like for you?
I am a volunteer as well as a director here, so I am the director of Community Services. In my director job, I coordinate the entire province, I work with our national office on our community service programs and making sure everything is running efficiently.
On the volunteer side, every day I usually go out and volunteer somewhere. It depends, we are out in Moose Jaw this week, we are at the hospitals once a week, we are in care homes and senior facilities. The other day I took a day off work and went to Nokomis to check on our dog team and then we went to Humboldt during the day to visit with people in the hospital, the staff, and patients. We are always somewhere. We usually volunteer after work. I am also a medical first responder so we will actually be at the legislature this week. So, we also do that as well we serve the community offering first aid services because events can’t happen unless you have that medical response there. We train people to be medical first aid responders.
Why is this program important to you?
I was a teacher and I also taught for St. John Ambulance on the side. So they knew I was going to eventually retire from teaching and coming out of COVID, I already was a volunteer with the therapy dog services and they asked if I would direct it. One of the reasons why I stay here—I work seven days a week running this program—is because I firmly believe in what we do. I am in therapy dog, first responder, and emergency response. With Dexter, my dog, we responded to emergencies for example, in Dauphin with the Carberry bus crash where you have people whose lives have been completely destroyed and they don’t want to talk to the media or a counsellor, they just want to be held and loved. They want people there that don’t want anything from them except to just be there and that is what we do. We provide that unconditional love and we do not want a thing from them other than to help them to get better. To watch somebody come from a state where they are absolutely destroyed to feeling there is life tomorrow and life will go on is amazing.
When we were in Wolseley, one of the most remarkable things I had seen I think, there was a lady comatose sitting a table with her head down and hadn’t done anything for months just sat there and we walked into the room and Dexter went right to her and touched her and she moved and her eyes opened and saw Dexter and she sat up and petted Dexter, and that hadn’t happened in months.
That is an example of what our dogs do, it is all our dogs. They will jump up on a bed in a hospital and people will just cry and hold them and tell us anything. It makes such a big difference in people’s lives it is phenomenal.
We do it because we know we make a difference, and we want to help and serve and that is what St. John Ambulance is all about—serving the community and helping.
What kind of response do you get from people when they get to be with the dogs?
Just a big thank you or a hug—we get hugs all the time and tears of joy. Just a thank you is big. We are just there to see a smile on their face, and their eyes literally light up. When I take my dog into a patient’s room you literally see their eyes change and light up, their whole- body language changes, and to see that in any care facility or addiction centre is amazing.
How does it make you feel doing this?
It just makes me feel great. I believe every person is here to make a positive difference in our world and I think we should do whatever we can to help each other.
We live in a world where we constantly hear negatives, but there are a lot of good things happening too and I want to be part of helping people.
I grew up in a family that always gave back to the community. When you have really long days at work and can go out and see that look on people’s faces the whole weight of the world is off your shoulders and that is the best way to describe it.
It’s like ‘Oh my gosh, I just made a massive difference in someone else’s life’ and every trouble you have in the world, you forget about, and it is just makes your heart smile. I believe we are here to help each other and help each other be better and get through tough times.
