Why Dogs Are Better Than Doctors

by Allan Hamilton, photos by Richard Quinn

I know that whenever I have returned from being a patient in the hospital to my home on the outskirts of Tucson, the first thing I look forward to seeing are my dogs. First, I want to ask my readers: can there be any reception that beats the affectionate display from your dog? There’s simply nothing that can match a dog’s happiness at greeting its master. Someone once commented: “Dogs are like God’s unconditional love-- all wrapped up in fur.” So I constantly remind myself that the best model of what it means to burst with love comes from knowing dogs.

When I come home, I want to have my dogs around me. Naturally, right after surgery, I have to be careful the dogs don’t romp all over me but I’m impressed that all my dogs seem to sense when I am not feeling well. Furthermore, I can see their empathetic distress when I am in pain and feeling poorly. I also feel like dogs shower their owners in positive energy and nothing improves your mood like affection. Another hidden benefit of dogs: they need to be walked three times a day and, as physicians, we’re always looking for ways to help our patients up and walking around. The simple truth is the more patients can ambulate, the less likely they will be to develop blood clots in their legs during the recovery phase.

Last but not least, I love having my dogs sleep at the foot of my bed. There’s something about that reassuring familiarity of sliding your foot under their weight. If you feel restless and can’t sleep, you can shuffle off to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and guess who’s right there with you? A dog is up for anything you may want to do. All they ask is that you bring them along. One of my dogs, Rosie, has a habit of jumping into any vehicle with an open door. She has practically become the mascot for our local UPS drivers because as soon as the door is open, Rosie jumps into the back and takes up her position. She is just up for the ride, wherever it may go. Eventually, I get a call that they are circling back around and will drop Rosie off at home. I can’t bring myself to stop her because I just admire her gumption, her desire to go out and find an engaging adventure. Dogs know how to have fun and they can teach us how to find it too.

There’s much made about the hair that dogs shed, their constant desire to lick your face, and all the germs, germs, germs. Baloney! First, there are simply no bacteria harbored in a dog’s mouth that can match the antibiotic-resistant, flesh-eating “bugs” that we raise in the hospital! And I defy anyone to find a single infection in a human patient that was infected by a dog’s presence. It just does not happen. One of my pet peeves is that hospitals do not allow pets to visit their owners in the hospital. Now I can see that we don’t want the Budweiser Clysdales roaming the halls but the loving presence of a pet carries far more love and compassion than most doctors bring to the bedside. I watch when a “service” dog goes through. Everyone’s face lights up.

At University Medical Center in Tucson, we have a beautiful German Shepherd that is one of our well-trained security dogs. The biggest problem we have for this dog is not felons, patients and visitors alike simply want to stop and pet the dog. The guards have learned to be good-natured and recognize that the dogs probably have more of a therapeutic role to play than an interdictive one. As far as I’m concerned, every dog should be awarded “service” status so they are granted free access to the hospital.