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Children’s Minnesota hires its first medical ‘dogtog’
One of the hospital’s newest employees has four legs, fur and a stethoscope.
ST PAUL, Minn. — Just months ago, a 6-year-old Willa Buchanan could barely walk the hospital halls. Now 7, there’s pep in her step.
“Willa wasn’t eating enough to grow and maintain her weight, so she ended up needing to have a feeding tube, a G-tube, placed in her stomach,” said Amy Lawler, Willa’s mom.
Not only were her parents there to support her through surgery, but so was Riggs, Children’s Minnesota’s first medical dog. A dogtor, if you will.
“Once we had Riggs, our kid went from being just sad and scared to actually, we saw her personality come back,” said Elizabeth Buchanan, Willa’s other mom.
Sure, equally adorable and important volunteer therapy dogs visit patients and their families too. But they typically stay for a couple of hours, and they’re not in hospital rooms during procedures.
Whereas Riggs is a full-time working dog. He works 40 hours a week, going home each night with Annika Kuelbs, child life specialist and medical dog handler at Children’s Minnesota.
“He gets so excited to put his vest on every morning,” Kuelbs said. “Then once we get here, he just charms everybody.”
Kuelbs says she conducts “medical play” with Riggs and individual children to prepare them for what’s going to happen to them.
“I use little pills, like real pill bottles,” she said. “I take the label off and I put little treats in there and we pretend that they’re pills. He also pretends to take liquid medicine with a syringe.”
Then, during real procedures, the two-year-old Lab/Retriever mix can distract patients with tricks or simply lend a paw to squeeze. Children and their families are encouraged to express whether they’d like Riggs there, and how close to the patient he can be.
It was Can Do Canines that trained Riggs to be ADI-certified, before handing him over to Kuelbs.
“We finally got our program started,” Kuelbs said.
She says, nationwide, increasingly more hospitals have medical dogs on staff, and says donors made it possible to bring in Riggs as Children’s Minnesota is a nonprofit hospital system.
Riggs sticks to the sixth floor on the St. Paul campus. A spokesperson says families on remaining floors, as well as at their Minneapolis campus, are eager to have more medical dogs.
As for Willa’s family, they’ve run into Riggs at follow-up appointments.
“Feeding tubes are painful,” Willa told KARE 11. “I don’t think I liked anything else besides seeing Riggs.”
“It really gave her a story for her surgery where it wasn’t just the story of something painful but a story of getting to meet Riggs,” said Lawler, adding that her daughter was so proud of herself once she started walking on her own again that she sent the dogtor a thank-you card.
Riggs started his new job in May and has since served around 160 patients during roughly 250 procedures. More information about the medical dog program and how to support it can be found online.
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The crash happened when a Suburban pulling a trailer failed to stop at a stop sign, Minnesota State Patrol said.
WAUKENABO, Minn. — Two people from Minnetonka died in a crash Friday in Aitkin County while others, including children, were hurt.
According to Minnesota State Patrol, it happened at the intersection of Highway 169 and Grove Street/County Road 3 in Waukenabo Township at approximately 5:15 p.m.
A Suburban pulling a trailer was driving east on County Road 3 but did not stop at the stop sign at Highway 169, authorities said. The vehicle was struck by a northbound GMC Yukon. Two other vehicles were struck in the crash, but the people in those two cars were not injured.
In the Suburban, the driver sustained life-threatening injuries, according to State Patrol. Elizabeth Jane Baldwin, 61, of Minnetonka, and Marlo Dean Baldwin, 92, of Minnetonka, both died. Officials said the driver of the vehicle, a 61-year-old from Minnetonka, has life-threatening injuries.
There were six people in the Yukon when the crash occurred. The 44-year-old driver, as well as passengers ages 18, 14, and 11, sustained what officials described as life-threatening injuries. The other two passengers have non-life-threatening injuries.
Alcohol is not believed to be a factor in the crash, but officials said Elizabeth Jane Baldwin had not been wearing a seatbelt.
Among those at the start line this year will be Alex Vigil.
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Pixar’s second installment of the movie features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
MINNEAPOLIS — Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” universe plays out inside the mind of the movie’s adolescent protagonist, Riley.
She plays a kid from Minnesota whose family uproots her life by moving to San Francisco. But did you know that what plays out in Riley’s mind actually comes from the mind of a real-life Minnesotan?
“You are one of us!” said Breaking the News anchor Jana Shortal.
“Yes, I am!” said Burnsville native and the movie’s creator and director, Kelsey Mann.
Mann was chosen for the role by ANOTHER Minnesotan — Pete Docter, the man behind the original movie, “Inside Out.”
“I don’t know if Pete asked me to do this movie because I was from Minnesota and he was from Minnesota … I just think it worked out that way,” Mann said.
How two guys from the south metro made a pair of Pixar movies that would change the game is a hell of a story that began with Docter in 2015.
“He [Docter] was just trying to tell a fun story — an emotional, fun story — and didn’t realize how much it would help give kids a vocabulary to talk about things they were feeling because they are feeling those emotions, but they’re really hard to talk about,” Mann said.
Some parents, counselors and teachers might even tell you it did more good for kids than just entertain them. It unlocked their emotions and begged for what Mann set out to create at the beginning of 2020.
“That part was fun, particularly fun,” he said. “I think the daunting part was following up a film that everyone really loved.”
But Mann knew what he wanted to do with the movie’s follow-up, “Inside Out 2.”
“Diving into Riley’s adolescence … that was just fun,” he said.
This time around, Riley is 13, hitting puberty and facing all of what, and who, comes with it. The franchise’s second installment features characters we’ve already met — Joy, Sadness and Anger — and gives them a new roommate named Anxiety.
“I think that’s what’s fun about the ‘Inside Out’ world: You can take something we all know and give it a face,” Mann said. “We can give anxiety a name and a face.”
The film follows Riley’s emotions fighting it out for control of her life. Joy wants Riley to stay young and hold on only to joy, while anxiety is hell-bent on taking over Riley over at the age of 13 because as a lot of us know, that’s when anxiety often moves in.
“I always pitched it as a takeover movie, like an emotional takeover,” Mann said. “Anxiety can kind of feel like that; it can take over and kind of shove your other emotions to the side and repress them.”
For a kids’ movie, it’s hard to watch this animation play out, even when an adult has the keys to decide.
“I’m making a movie about anxiety and I still have to remind myself to have my anxiety take a seat,” Mann said.
All of our individual anxieties have a place in this world.
“The whole movie honestly is about acceptance. Both acceptance of anxiety being there and also of your own flaws,” said Mann.
Even for our kids, we have to remember that this is life.
Anxiety will come for them; it does for us all.
The “Inside Out” world just shows them it’s so.
