(upbeat music) - Recently folks, my colleague, Mary Gamba, on our sister series "Lessons in Leadership" had a one-on-one interview with Mary Beth Cooney, executive director of Creature Comfort Pet Therapy.

The conversation between Mary Beth and Mary was all about how pets can help bring comfort and healing to improve the wellbeing of their owners and other folks who need help when it comes to their struggles.

Pets make a difference.

Let's check it out.

- Hello and welcome to Lessons in Leadership.

I am Mary Gamba.

Right now I'm happy to be joined by Mary Beth Cooney, who is Executive Director of Creature Comfort Pet Therapy.

Mary Beth, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you, Mary.

I'm pleased to be here.

- Absolutely.

Before we even start talking about anything at all, who is that adorable pooch on your lap?

- This is Coby.

This is our family dog.

And Coby was certified with myself, my daughter, my grandson, to do pet therapy.

Unfortunately, he had a health incident, so he's now retired, but he went to hospitals, nursing homes, he'd go to presentations with me to recruit more volunteers, and he's such a calm and sweet boy.

He's a wonderful dog.

- That's so great.

Well, let's get right into it.

Let's talk a little bit about Creature Comfort Pet Therapy.

And I have to, full disclosure, I found out about your organization on Facebook and I am now a volunteer, as with my partner Harley, we are a partner therapy team.

But just tell us a little bit, what is Creature Comfort Pet Therapy?

We're gonna put the website up, so if people wanna get involved, if they wanna donate, if they wanna volunteer with their pet, tell us a little bit more about what you do.

- So Creature Comfort is a pet therapy organization started in 2011 by two women, Joan Baer and Annie Murphy, and they just recognized from their own experience that there was a need for pet therapy in this part of New Jersey.

And so they started very small, they had three facilities.

Basically we certify these animals to go into facilities to bring healing comfort.

And normally a dog can not just walk into a facility, so these are scheduled visits that we contract with the facilities to have so that everybody's prepared for the visits.

So Joan and Annie started this with Morristown Medical Center, and a nursing home, and Greystone Psychiatric Hospital.

And that was just three facilities and we now have approximately 300 facilities in nine counties.

- That's amazing.

And what are those, and you don't have to list all the counties, but I just know, because I'm in Westfield myself, you're primarily in Northern New Jersey, correct?

Southern, Northern.

- Right.

- Right, if you kind of take, we started in Morristown, so if you sort of pinpoint Morristown and take a circle around Morristown, about an hour outside of Morristown, we hit nine counties.

We may not go to the very edge of Bergen or the very bottom of Somerset, but we are west, north, east, south of Morristown and touching nine counties.

- That's amazing.

And one thing that I was fascinated to find out about, and I would love for you to talk about is the fact that we're not just talking about dogs here.

I have my therapy dog now, Harley, she went through the rigorous test.

I was so proud of her.

I was more nervous.

It was like going for a test at college and everything from having to walk by a treat and not take the treat and loud crowds and walk up to someone in a wheelchair and a walker.

But I was surprised to find out that there are other type of creatures, if you will, that go into these facilities.

Talk a little bit about that.

- And that, of course, is more the evaluation for dogs because these other animals couldn't do everything you just named.

(Mary laughing) The rest of the animals are cats, rabbits, Guinea pigs, ferrets, mini goats, and mini horses.

So, and we have had them all at different times.

We don't have any ferrets right now, but the percentage is really 90% dogs, as you can imagine.

And we have about 260 active teams, but maybe there's five to seven cats at a time and three to five rabbits and couple of ferrets and one mini goat right now named Lucy.

She's precious.

- I can't wait to meet Lucy.

(laughs) - She's just precious.

And so it varies according to how, again, these animals, how long they can last.

And that is one of our concerns that we always need more volunteers because these sweethearts don't live long enough, and unfortunately we do lose animals every year.

- Absolutely, and I would love for you to talk a little bit about the distinction from many people watching and we hear about it on the news, people say, "I have this comfort animal and I need to bring them on an airplane."

I remember it was like a comfort peacock.

What is the difference between a service dog and a therapy dog, like the one that you're holding right now?

- Absolutely.

A service dog you can identify usually they'll wear some kind of a vest to identify them and they are performing a service for the person who has a disability of some kind, could be seen or unseen, but they are with the animal for them to have this service by this animal, which was trained for this particular person.

Therefore, which most of us know, when you see a service dog, you do not go near them.

They are working and you do not wanna disturb the work that they are doing.

They are also legally allowed to go into places as long as the questions are, "Is this a service dog?

And what service are they performing?"

And then they can go into places legally.

A therapy dog is not allowed to just go into any place.

They are actually there with their owner because they're all privately owned to help other people.

So their service is to help their other people with their owner and they can go into places that we schedule as an organization.

So they are certified and they have a right to go in once we schedule with these organizations, we actually contract with them so that they're prepared.

We have dates on a calendar, everything is known ahead of time, that they are invited into that facility for that particular time and place.

- And if you are a facility watching, we talked a little bit, if you have a dog right now that you think number one is able to be a therapy dog, I know I talked about that, you go on the website, I know from personal experience, you put in the application, then you go in for the test.

But what if you're a school, a nursing home, and you find out more information?

How does that work?

Do you decide where these therapy dogs are going to go?

Or if I have a nonprofit I could say, "Hey, Mary Beth, I'm interested."

How does that work?

- That's actually a very good question.

We are known now through word of mouth, through social media, through just having it been experienced by people.

And so we have facilities who come to us.

We literally do not market for facilities, mainly because we are in such high demand that we get 30-50 new requests a month.

And we cannot take them all on because of course we don't have enough volunteers to fill every single one because we want the visits to be secure.

We want them to be filled when they're on that calendar.

So they go onto our website, they also put in an application like you did as a volunteer, and that gives us all the information we need.

And then our scheduling coordinator, Nancy, will call them and check with them as to what their needs are.

Some facilities don't fully understand what the value or what the best use of pet therapy is.

So if they're a high school and they say, "Oh, can the animals just sort of stand in the hall and the kids will walk past them?"

It's not, that wouldn't be the best use of the animal.

Instead we say, "Do you have a special needs classroom?

Do you have a guidance office where maybe they can come in and help with the children who are under stress that day?"

And so we explain and teach to the facilities what is the best use of the animals, and then we help to figure out which animals are best for different types of facilities.

Libraries with children, it is a quiet place, but they're children so it takes a little bit of energy.

A nursing home would definitely be a calmer, quieter animal.

And so there's different settings that fit best.

And the animal is actually who dictates which are the best facilities for the owner to go to.

- Absolutely, I was just gonna say that I recently visited a location and it was a site for individuals with special needs.

And it was just amazing watching Harley walk up to the different individuals and just greet them in different ways in the way that they wanted to be greeted, so that was really, really neat to see.

and I just wanna say it doesn't take much time.

I mean, it's literally you could do one hour a month, and I know I sound like an infomercial for Creature Comfort, but it's just been so rewarding to me and to Harley.

And people say, "Well, how do you know if your dog wants to do it?"

Trust me, your dog enjoys it and wants to do it.

You can tell if they do.

So I just wanna say on behalf of Steve Adubato and our entire team, thank you so much for the great work that you do.

And again, we'll put up the website if you're interested in volunteering and getting more information for Creature Comfort, log on today and learn some more.

And thank you so much, Mary Beth, for joining us.

- Thank you so much, this was a pleasure, and thank you for being a team.

- Oh, it's so exciting, yes.

And thanks so much.

And everyone stay with us, we'll be right back after this.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Newark Board of Education.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

PSE&G.

The Fidelco Group.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

The North Ward Center.

And by The Adler Aphasia Center.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Chamber.

And by NJ.Com.

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