In this interview, Dr. Oz speaks with author of “Angel on a Leash,” David Frei, about the amazing healing moments he’s witnessed his therapy dogs perform. Animal-assisted therapy uses dogs or other animals to help people recover from or better cope with health problems, such as heart disease, cancer and mental health disorders. David explains how to tap into the healing powers of your pet, and why we’re only just scratching the surface of this growing field of medicine. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A young woman had been in a coma, and she woke up, and the first thing she said is she wanted to see the dogs.
Oh my goodness.
And so you can be sure we got the dogs there pretty quickly to see her, and she got on the parents, put her on the floor on a blanket, and she really just started crying holding the dogs.
and it was amazing and nobody could figure out, you know, where she got that, but she definitely heard about the dogs and that's the first thing she asked for when she could speak.
Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Oz and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
Our guest today, David Fry, president of Angel on a Leash.
He's well known to many of you as one of the hosts of the popular Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Don't also know many of you because he's been on today's show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, Charlie Rose, all the big programs.
I've been honored to have David visit and talk a little bit about some of his work.
He's also a trustee for Take the Lead, which is a national nonprofit foundation providing support for members of the dog show family suffering from terminal disease or life-threatening illness, and I congratulate you for that.
Brian Dotson has become a very close friend of mine.
He reached out a few months ago.
He said, listen, we've got this wonderful program at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, which is one of the largest children's hospitals in the country.
And it does wonderful work and high-tech innovations all the time, huge cardiac center, all the things you expect at a hospital.
But they've been known nationally as willing to do things that are a bit alternative.
They had energy medicine working with cancer patients who are children years before it was commonplace.
They do art therapy.
They bring clowns in to the ICUs, again, to give the kids some joy, which is, they believe, I believe, an important part of the recovery process.
But they've also started bringing pets.
Something that has historically only been done for folks who had seeing-eye dogs and companion peps.
Well, we have a studio accompaniment today with a beautiful pet, but he didn't wander in alone.
It was brought in by David Frye.
David, thank you for joining us with your friend.
You're welcome.
I'm happy to be here.
David's known by millions of American television viewers as the co-host of USA Network's annual telecast of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which I think is just the coolest thing in the world.
I mean, there's just something fun about watching people prance their pets back and forth.
But the fact that you would be willing to put the extra quarter in to go first class and have these pets now play an active role We have this great spiritual and emotional connection to our pets, to our dogs especially, and I think it's reflected in the things that we're doing not only on the dog show, in the audience of the millions of people that watch the dog show, but also in the things that come out of that, like this wonderful program that we call Angel on a Leash.
So tell me about the program...
We started Angel on a Leash as a charitable activity for the Westminster Kennel Club a little less than four years ago in supporting a therapy dog program at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York, Presbyterian.
And it's grown.
We now have over 30 teams.
At Morgan Stanley, and we have teams in eight facilities across the country, including Providence, Portland, Oregon, St. Jude in Memphis, Hackensack University Medical Center, new alternatives for children, and a number of other places, too.
So David, walk me through exactly what happens when the program opens in a hospital.
So any of those facilities you can take as an example.
Well, the basis is really visits.
We walk into the room, you saw it happen today.
The dog came into the room, the energy changes in the room immediately.
And that happens with patients, it happens with their families, it happens with staff.
When we visit somewhere, our first eight to ten interactions are with people on the staff.
And depending on the facility, it may be something, you know, staff has a tough job.
But one of the first places I ever visited was an AIDS hospice.
And the first eight or ten visits were with people who go through the stress of seeing people die and working with them, you know, constantly.
So it's good for the staff, too.
But mainly for the patients.
Gives them something to think about other than the challenges that they're facing.
Gives them an opportunity to smile.
Gives them something to talk about.
Gives them something to think about.
Logistically, there's somebody from the club who takes their own pet?
Well, these are teams that are certified through a therapy dog agency, and we have organized it and put them together and brought them in.
It's not just purebred dogs.
It can be mixed breed dogs as well.
But the principle is that it's a team.
It's a human and a dog coming to visit in a hospital or some healthcare facility, or it could be a school, it could be a prison, it could be a number of different things.
But the whole idea is to get people to live a healthier life, to help them come back from some challenges that they may be facing.
And you literally go from room to room, you know, bring in the six-year-old kids recovering from a hernia operation and haven't played with the pet for a while.
I'm just curious how it actually works.
It depends on the situation where we're visiting.
For example, we visited the Ronald McDonald House, which is based here in New York City, the Ronald McDonald House in New York City, which is a home away from home for families with children with cancer.
Right.
So we're visiting the kids who may be inpatients or outpatients at the area hospitals.
We're visiting with their families.
And it's an opportunity for these kids to smile and hug a dog and maybe think of their own dog at home or just to have something to hug and talk about and gives the parents the opportunity to.
We also visit in a pilot program, the first dogs ever allowed in, Memorial Sloan Kettering here in New York City.
We're visiting on the 10th floor in Women's Health.
So we're visiting women who are either coming out of surgery or facing surgery And I notice the angel's over there trying to gnaw on Mike's knee.
He's absolutely right.
The energy changes in the room and the attention changes and the focus changes.
The dog angel makes you feel better.
Well, sometimes just having a presence there indicates, you know, that you're caring about somebody and it gives them a chance to relax a little bit.
It does, but I gather that there's some training that goes into the process.
There is a lot of training, a lot of training, and the dogs have to have the right attitude and aptitudes and temperament as well, but mainly we're training the people.
I think the people who are involved need to know the right things to say.
They need to know how to protect their dog from situations in health care facilities.
Give me an example.
What I was intrigued by when Brian called me was the concept.
I think it's self-evident to most healers that dogs, any animal, will bring out a different side of a human.
It's wonderful because it brings us back to nature, to our fundamental desires in life.
That's a very instinctual response I get.
But having been exposed to pets who are in the healing profession, yes, they have to be carefully selected to have the right temperament, attitude, attitude.
That's such a funny Pets who are in the healing profession.
But it really is a true statement.
It's true.
Well, you know, one of the things when we first started doing this, the barriers that we faced were more often from administrators who said, no dogs in my facilities.
And what has happened is the science has shown over the years that a clean and healthy dog poses no more of a risk for anybody in that hospital than some of the people who work there or come visit there.
It's true.
No, you're absolutely right.
And it really is the truth.
And now, through the years, the science is showing, the research is showing that interacting with a dog lowers your blood pressure, lowers your heart rate, and that helps the healing process.
And that's actually, the best data is actually on that lowering of blood pressure effect.
When you, in the study in Buffalo, when they gave it randomly allocated, you know, you say, how can you randomly allocate a pet that is a dog to a group of people versus none?
They actually had significant decreases in blood pressure in the hypertensive group that got the dogs.
It was a high-pressure profession.
It was stockbrokers.
They split the group into a control group with no pet, and the other half they gave a pet.
At the end of six months, they did all these measurements again of blood pressures and things like that.
They had to be a house-trained pet because that raises your blood pressure when you're training a dog.
Well, I think that's part of the process.
You know, they're a member of the family.
I mean, they are real dogs and real people, and I think that's part of the appeal of the activity is that it's a grassroots activity that I can do something with the dog that I love and do something in my community.
David, you work together with Greer Griffith, who is the director of the programs for Angel on a Leash at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital.
Greer, if I can just go to you for a second, and thanks for joining us today.
You're about to give a talk, so I appreciate taking time out to spend a little bit of time with us.
What got you interested in the program?
Well, David approached me about four years ago, and I had been volunteering my time visiting with my two labs.
And it just sounded like such a great combination.
I loved everything he presented to me about starting a program at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital and having the association with the Westminster Kennel Club.
And so it was all the right ingredients, and as a result, the program has just blossomed.
And it started with your two dogs.
Had they been trained formally, or is it just the knowledge you had that they were good around people that made you comfortable?
They're both Delta Society registered dogs, so yes, they've absolutely been trained.
What does that mean, Delta Society?
It's an organization that registers the therapy dogs, and they have policies and procedures and standards that we have to live up to.
Give me, if you don't mind, just some concrete examples of what they are.
Just a couple that are more obvious, perhaps.
Well, obviously, the dog has to pass a skills test.
Which means it has to have the basic obedience to stay, calm, heal.
And just so that you know that the dog is safe, so when the dog is visiting it will listen to its owner.
And it also has to have a test of the temperament.
We know that the temperament is correct.
If a dog doesn't like to be petted by strangers, it's not going to be a good therapy dog.
And so we look for dogs that are very sociable, dogs that love people, and that will listen and obey their owners, and that a dog is safe.
And that's the criteria that they have to pass.
David, is there a Delta Society for kids?
Can I put my children in one of these obedience programs?
I'm sure there's something in the equivalent of that if your kids need that kind of work.
See, the dogs, the great thing about dogs is, you know, they can stay at home when you go out sometimes, you know.
Well, the kids want to stay home usually.
The logistics of breaking into any organization that's been in hospitals tend to be more challenging, and Greta, let me address this to you if you don't mind.
I'm sure there were times that did not go well.
What were the times that you were concerned this might not be the right program?
Well, you know, I have to tell you, Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital is so well organized and so set up that they were very ready for us.
They'd had some visiting dogs for a couple of years, and we came in and we just made the program larger.
So they were very receptive, and I think the key to that is having People at the hospital that know what you do, and when I arrive at Morgan Family Children's Hospital or any of the 25 teams that go to Children's Hospital, the Child Life gives us a list of medically cleared patients.
So we know where we're going.
We don't have to really face anything.
Oh, there may be a child, a parent doesn't want the dog to be seen, you know, but we're pretty well protected by the hospital.
I have to say I've never had a bad experience there.
And do they screen out kids who might have allergies to pets?
Absolutely.
They screen all of that before we even arrive.
We have to have a list.
And the Child Life people, they go to the individual doctors and they say, yes, this child can see a dog.
No, this child can't.
We're only just scratching the surface here.
We've got a whole lot more to discuss after the break.
Greer, you're saying something that the producers want you to say to me again.
It felt to be very heartwarming.
Well, in the break, I told Dr. Oz I had to thank him for something that was very personal and very close to me.
Dr. Oz operated on my 82-year-old father three years ago.
He had a big open-heart surgery operation.
Last year, he married a woman younger than me, and he's doing great, and I just have the world to thank Dr. Oz for.
Well, you're very kind.
I appreciate it much, and Mike was reminding me that I probably put some kind of a growth factor in his heart to get it to grow even larger, but congratulations to him, and kudos.
We were speaking, David, earlier about how you actually grow a program like this in a hospital.
Well, the tie-in that we have with Westminster helps that a lot, because every year we talk about the program on television, on the national telecast for Westminster, and following that we get inundated with emails and phone calls from people who say, I want to be an Angel on a Leash team, I've got a great dog, or they call us from a facility saying, we want our facility to partner with Angel on a Leash so that we can help promote the use of therapy dogs around the country.
So when the dog walks into the room, the kids must swarm the dog.
They do.
Well, and actually, for example, here at the Ronald McDonald House in New York City, where we see kids on a continuing basis over a number of weeks, maybe the first time we go there, the kid might stand on the other side of the room.
Maybe they don't understand dogs.
Maybe they're afraid of dogs.
The next week we come back, they're halfway across the room.
The next week we come back, they'll come over and touch the dog.
Right.
And the next week they're hugging the dog.
Right.
So it really is a great progression that we have that we can see with these people.
And sometimes maybe that'll happen over the course of one night.
But the fact is the kids understand, you know what, they come to understand what the dogs are there for and they get to enjoy them as well.
What surprised you the most about the program?
I think what surprised me the most is how quick to embrace it that the administrators, people like Bill Sullivan, who's the CEO at the Ronald McDonald House, Cynthia Sparrow has been a godsend for us at Morgan Stanley.
She's the executive director there, as you know, and is on the board for Angel on a Leash.
How quick they are to embrace it and how well they understand exactly the great things that the dogs are doing.
And how do folks learn more about the program?
They can go to our website, angelonleash.org, and we can help them find a place and an instructor to get certified so that they can start visiting in their own place.
Maybe they have a place that they already know they want to visit, or maybe they know of a place in their community where they want to visit, and we can help them with that.
Let's turn now, if you can, to the Westminster Dog Show.
When I see it on television, I watch it, but I'm almost gawking.
I think it's so cool.
Wait a second, when do you have time to do this?
I don't know why, but...
Do you do this while you're exercising?
I do do while I'm exercising, by the way, but either because they've made movies now about satirizing the whole world.
A lot of people watch us.
Millions of people watch us live on USA Network every year.
And I think they watch for three reasons.
One, they watch for the competition.
They want to see who's going to win and who's going to be America's dog for the next year.
The second reason they watch is just for the variety.
We have 169 different breeds and varieties of dog.
They want to see all the different kinds of hair, shapes, and sizes.
But the third reason they watch is for the alma mater factor, I call it.
They have a Cavalier, like Angel here, and they're sitting at home with their Cavalier.
They want to see the Cavalier.
They're going to root for the Cavalier.
And that's part of the excitement of the show, I think.
Why don't you have a Mutt category?
Well, because we're governed by the rules of the American Kennel Club, and they don't have a mutt category, per se, and we wouldn't have a way to judge them.
You say that, but from a layperson's perspective, and I'm in that group, Cavalier King Charles, which my grandmother-in-law throughout my marriage to Lisa had, and we have a good friend who must have 25 of them.
He actually had 17, when he didn't have puppies, he probably went up to 7, 25. He used to bring them by to the beach house so that he'd go walk on the water.
And so we'd see him every single day.
And he came always at 4 o'clock, and the kids would know he was coming, and they'd swarm these dogs.
So, you know, got these little Oz children being run over by these attack dogs.
But they're not very intimidating dogs.
That's the nice thing about them, too.
I don't think a Cavalier is going to be much of an attack dog.
I've seen her in action this morning.
But they used to lie down and get walked over, and the kids would love that.
But how does, again, coming back to the question, how do you compare a Cavalier King Charles to a German Shepherd?
I mean, they're so different.
You look for such different things in them.
You're right.
Well, you're judging the dog based on the ideal specimen of that dog that's described in the standard, which is a written description of that ideal specimen.
So you're comparing a German Shepherd in front of you to the written description of the perfect German Shepherd.
Right.
And you're comparing the Cavalier to the written description of the perfect Cavalier.
And whichever dog fits its standard better is the dog.
The parent clubs write the standards.
The German Shepherd Dog Club of America writes the standard that describes what a German Shepherd should look like.
And it can be anything from cosmetic, you know, eye color, eye shape, anything else, to height, weight, coat type, and things like that.
And it's protected by the parent club.
There must be...
This quibbling that breaks out.
Driving dogs is very subjective.
You know, the standard might say the dog should have great length of neck.
Well, what's great length of neck?
It might mean one thing to you and it might mean something else to me.
The dog is a giraffe.
Well, that could be it, too.
The dog still has to have some balance.
It has to be artistically pleasing, too, and some symmetry and balance to it.
But the main thing is that the standard may call for this kind of a head, and the dog may have a beautiful head and maybe it doesn't move quite the way you'd like it to move.
Maybe another dog is a great mover and doesn't have the same beautiful head that you see in the other dog.
Well, which is your personal preference?
Maybe you're more of a head judge than a movement judge.
Does personality come in at all when you're judging?
Because this dog has a great personality.
Well, personality, yeah, is part of showmanship, and it's a dog show, and as we say, you've got to show.
Especially at the end at a great dog show like Westminster where you have seven wonderful dogs standing in the ring at the end and one of them is going to be selected as best in show, that yes, personality, temperament, showmanship, presence, if you will, factor into it.
When that beagle walked in this year and the crowd went nuts, we had a noise level we've never heard before.
I've done the television for 19 years.
We have never had that.
We're sold out at Madison Square Garden.
It was so loud in there.
It was unbelievable.
And the dog stood up to it and said, oh yeah, these people are all here clapping for me.
And he won.
And he won and it showed.
But that's what it's all about.
There's a lot more where that came from, but first, a quick break.
Now, for many of us, the main exposure is through movies made out in the process.
How does that affect it?
Are the stereotypes truthful?
Well, you know, being the object of satire is a compliment.
We take that as a compliment when talented people like Christopher Guest and that gang.
The movie didn't make fun of the dogs.
Not at all.
They're sacred to us.
They didn't make fun of the sport, which is pretty much sacred to us.
We made fun of the people.
And we admit to being a target-rich environment when it comes to characters.
And we sat in that movie and said, God, I know that person.
I know that character.
Or I did that before.
I didn't bring Mr. Bumblebee one day, and my wife was upset that it was my fault, and I had to go back and find one.
So I think we've all been there.
I think it could have been about NASCAR. It could have been about a chess club.
There are characters because we're real people, and that's what it's all about.
It's a great family sport, and that's what it's all about for us.
Do you find, as you look at the folks who are actually part of the Kennel Club, that it's as popular among young people as it is among older folks?
Absolutely.
It's a multi-generational activity for our families.
I mean, we have people who have been in it for the second, third, and fourth generation of their families, and they're continuing.
It's a great family sport.
We have junior showmanship competition for kids 9 to 18, and it's something that you can do as a family and have fun doing it.
And you get to do it with the dogs that are members of your family too that you love.
How professional is the process?
Does the person who's walking the dog own the dog all the time, and are they the ones that train the dog?
No, there are a lot of professional handlers, but the vast majority of the people in our sport are what we call the owner handlers, and often the breeder owner handlers.
They bred the dog, they own the dog, they show the dog, it lives with them all week long.
A dog like Uno, who was the best in show beagle this year, he's been living with the handler since he was six months old, and he's two and a half years old now.
But that's for training purposes, and the four owners that are behind this dog wanted to get him out, wanted people to see him because they were so proud of him, and he was a great young dog.
I mean, to win at Westminster at that age is just unbelievable.
So in that case, for Uno, the breeder was different from the owner, is different from the trainer, their handler.
Well, one of the co-breeders is also one of the co-owners, but he has four co-owners who live in four different states, and they are all beagle people who were very proud of the dog and wanted people to see him.
Is it like horse racing in that when you win a big contest like this, like the Kentucky Derby, you can sell your breeding capabilities?
Well, I think you could, but the reality is that they want a dog like this into their own breeding program to create the next generation of healthy, happy, sound dogs that can become great show dogs and also great family pets.
So they don't put Uno out to stud now.
Well, he's probably not really going to be a public stud as you would think of it for a racehorse, for example.
But, you know, I don't even...
A racehorse really is...
That's not a great example either because they're not a public stud per se.
But he's not going to flood the market with puppies.
There are not going to be Uno puppies out there everywhere.
Maybe stuffed toys.
You know, a plush toy.
What's a public stud?
Well, a public stud is where you could call up and say, I want to use your dog to breed to my female and have puppies.
But he's a private stud in that they're going to limit his use to their program, to their own breeding program and their own dogs.
Got it.
Is that how racehorses work also?
Well, I think so.
I mean, racehorses are a totally different stratosphere in terms of the finance involved, and you're talking about syndicates and multi-million dollar stud fees and things like that.
Yeah.
Besides your dog show, which is the one that most of us hear about, there must be others that are also national in scope.
There's about 1,500 dog shows around the country, and of course Westminster is America's dog show.
And I know that people see the national dog show on Thanksgiving Day that's on NBC following the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that's seen by about 18 million people.
Why is it called Westminster?
Not a very American title.
Well, it's a funny story, really.
A group of sporting gentlemen, hunters, who would gather and go on bird hunts with their dogs back in the mid-1870s.
Afterwards, they would gather in a hotel bar and have a few drinks and...
And lie to each other about their dogs.
And one night they said, you know, well, I'll show you my dogs better than yours.
Let's have a dog show.
And I said, okay, well, let's put it on.
Who's going to put it on?
Well, let's make a club and we'll call it the Westminster Kennel Club because we're drinking in the Westminster Hotel here in New York City.
Westminster's been around 132 years, so no one else can compare to that.
That's tough.
Let me end with a couple of insights that I've gained just reading about pets.
The first is, pets in the home teach empathy, responsibility, and raise IQ. Absolutely.
Is that generally believed to be true by all folks in the Westminster Club as well as all the other?
Yes, indeed.
We believe in therapy dogs.
We believe in the great programs, the wonderful program that we have, and those are among the benefits.
Allergies.
Is it true that getting exposed when you're young to pets can increase the chance of allergies?
Studies have shown that.
Can decrease the chance of allergies as you get older.
Decrease, not increase.
Not increase, decrease.
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
Because somehow it gets your immune system to mature appropriately.
We sort of find the same thing with dust.
Getting exposed to dust and dirt when you're young may actually reduce your chance of having problems.
Well, that's an excuse to not clean your home, I guess.
I use it all the time.
Good for you.
Language therapy.
Kids can help folks speak.
We're using these dogs for more than just visits, and Greer has been a leader for us up at Morgan Stanley in working with physical therapists and occupational therapists and using the dogs to motivate patients, especially kids, to do things in their therapy more readily than they might if there wasn't a dog there.
If a therapist comes in and asks a child to do some sort of range of motion exercise on their left side, if they're having problems on their left side, it's hard work for them and it may hurt them.
You put a dog on the left side, put a brush in that left hand, and suddenly the child is brushing the dog and doing his therapy.
So it's a program with goals that the therapist can attack.
Another advantage that keeps being reported in literature is that pets keep people moving, because you've got to walk and you've got to go outside.
It's a great thing.
I always go home.
I've got a regular schedule with my dogs, and I think most people do, that you want to get out, and it gives you an excuse to get out and not only exercise them, but have some social opportunities, too, with people in the neighborhood.
I'm known throughout the neighborhood as Angel's dad.
Nobody knows me as David Fry.
I'm Angel's dad.
And two final ones.
Mike, one to you.
Pets help people survive heart attacks.
Did you know that?
Absolutely.
You did know that?
Yeah.
There's actually some good data on that, and they lower blood pressure.
And Greer, what's the most amazing thing you've seen with the pets in your work at the Children's Hospital?
Well, I think the most amazing thing I've heard, and I actually didn't see this, but I was part of it, is a young woman had been in a coma, and she woke up, and the first thing she said is she wanted to see the dogs.
Oh my goodness.
And so you can be sure we got the dogs there pretty quickly to see her.
And she got on the parents, put her on the floor on a blanket, and she really just started crying holding the dogs.
And it was amazing.
And nobody could figure out You know where she got that, but she'd evidently seen the dogs in the hospital, heard about the dogs in the hospital, and that's the first thing she asked for when she could speak.
That's a wonderful story.
Greg Griffith, director of the program, Angel on a Leash at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in New York Presbyterian.
