He leaves a legacy. Casper, the first therapy dog to serve at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, recently passed away at the age of 15.
“He was just so kind and gentle,” Lisa Kinsel, Casper’s owner, and handler, tells WSB Radio.
The golden retriever and yellow Labrador mix was originally trained by Canine Assistants in Milton, Georgia to be a service dog for a physically disabled individual. Part of training often involves going to a hospital to interact with patients. Kinsel says in the case of Casper, his arrival at Children’s Healthcare in 2009 sparked an idea.
“The volunteers were talking about the fact that the hospital would really benefit from a dog being there full-time,” Kinsel says.
The rest became history. Kinsel, who was managing CHOA’s volunteer services office at the time, soon founded with Casper the Canines For Kids Program - one of the first and few in the country.
From 2009 until he retired in 2018, Casper loved his job, touching the lives of so many young patients and staff at CHOA.
“(Every day) he would jump out of the car and grab the leash out of my hand and just trot right in and went right to the front desk. He had his routine.” A routine from the front desk “then...into the radiology team lead room where he got his breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, and from there we went to the surgery department and to recovery.”
Kinsel say Casper “found his calling.”
“I don’t know what he would have been like if he had been with just one recipient. I found Casper to be loving everybody.” Therapy dogs “just know when someone is hurting...someone needs some help. And (Casper) just instinctively seemed to know that.”
One of Casper’s special patient relationships was with Creed Campbell of Roswell.
“Creed just gravitated towards Casper and I don’t really think he even saw him as a dog, all of a sudden he was his best buddy,” Kinsel says. “When Creed was going through all his treatments we would be on the floor and you didn’t even need to tell Casper where he was, he just automatically knew which room he was in.”
Creed, diagnosed with Monosomy 7, died in April of 2012 at seven years old.
Kinsel says Casper’s effect on so many patients was clear. “Even if he was in their room, for instance for 10 minutes, they remembered that visit. And I can’t tell you what that means to me.”
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta now has more than a dozen therapy dogs in its program.
Join WSB Radio for the 22nd annual Care-a-Thon which benefits the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. It airs live beginning at 5 a.m. Thursday, July 28, to finish on Friday, July 29 at 6 p.m.