JJ's Journey: A Story of Heroes and Heart

by Tracy Calhoun

Overview

Tracy Calhoun, a longtime nurse, shares the heart-melting story of working alongside JJ, the Therapy Dog, the brightest and most intuitive dog Tracy has ever trained in this memoir loaded with over 60 color photos of our canine hero and pals. When not mooching dog treats, JJ is dedicated to helping humans cope with tragedy and loss through love and hugs.

Tracy Calhoun, a nurse on staff at Samaritan Evergreen Hospice House in Oregon, paused at the bedside of an elderly patient in a coma. The woman had no family or friends, but the hospice team had learned she liked dogs, so Tracy put her Golden Retriever, JJ, a staff “therapist,” on the woman’s bed. JJ snuggled up, nuzzled a motionless hand, and then settled in, letting her body warmth cuddle and comfort the patient in her final hours. The woman, who had been unresponsive for days, then performed her final, intentional act. She stroked JJ’s head.

Tracy recorded the intimate moment on her phone, then uploaded it to Facebook where she was keeping a modest account for friends, family, and community members who knew her and JJ. In August 2015, that video went viral, and was rapidly seen by tens of millions of viewers worldwide. To Tracy, it was a turning point in her mission to explain to a wider audience the joy that therapy dogs provide, and to do it with humor and canine chaos, as only a dog obsessed with bacon, puppies, and swimming can.

Along the way, Tracy’s own story has grown and changed through her love of animals, and she’s found, in difficult times, she has needed the same comfort her pups offer to patients—for herself.

“These stories of an unforgettable and deeply intuitive Golden Retriever named JJ, as told by her fabulous handler Tracy, are shared with humor and heart. Many wonderful moments happen when working with therapy dogs and reading about JJ’s magic is an extraordinarily moving experience.” — Donna Frindt, Executive Director, Project Canine

“An emotionally satisfying and entertaining collection of tales not only between a dog and her human, but between this remarkable soul in a Golden Retriever suit and dozens of people in crisis—from hospice care to school shootings.” —Janet Velanovsky , Owner, Kaizen Pet Training&Behavior

“An inspiring memoir, JJ’s Journey illustrates the medical and spiritual benefits of the human-animal bond through JJ’s unwavering patience, love, and support for the hospice patients and their grieving families. JJ’s Journey brings to light that in our greatest time of need, every person can feel they are loved, honored, and mean something in this world thanks to the unconditional love that comes so naturally from a therapy dog’s heart.” —Colby Webb, Founder, Sav-a-Bull Rescue and author of Forty One Pit Bulls

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635760439
Publisher:	Diversion Books
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Tracy Calhoun, also known as Bossypants and Crankypants, is a hospice nurse also on staff at Samaritan Evergreen Hospice House, a therapy dog trainer and a crisis response dog trainer, and she is JJ's human. She lives in Albany, OR.

JJ, a purebred golden retriever, has been certified for therapy work and for crisis response work, and is part of the staff at Samaritan Evergreen Hospice House. She enjoys treats, her big family, and having her own Facebook page.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

I have always heard people mention something going "viral" online, but never knew what that really meant — certainly not from personal experience. I started a Facebook page separate from my personal profile the year the Hospice House opened to share stories of the power of the human-animal bond. At the time, I was only a user of Facebook, and had not yet explored the other social media platforms, so I wanted to stay with something familiar. I thought a separate page would allow me to have a place where I could keep tales related to my therapy dog work. In the first year, I had about 200 followers, mostly friends and family, with a few family members of former hospice patients. I shared photos and articles about therapy dogs, including sagas featuring my Golden Retriever, JJ.

Long before I started work at Samaritan Evergreen Hospice, the director's dream for the program included opening an inpatient hospice facility, where patients could be admitted when they needed more intense symptom management. It was years in the making and the effort was largely driven by our local community because they saw the benefit in having such a special place. As it turns out, residents and businesses made donations not only to buy the land, but to build and furnish the Hospice House in its entirety.

By the time these dreams were coming to fruition, I had been working as an outpatient hospice nurse with Samaritan for several years. Long before working at Samaritan, I started my hospice career at an inpatient hospice facility in Washington State. Since I was the only person on staff who had ever worked at an inpatient hospice facility, I had been invited to help with the details of the construction. JJ was just over a year old at the time, and she made many trips through the building before we accepted our first patient.

JJ has been a fixture at our inpatient hospice from opening day, and I consider it a gift to have her at work with me. Because of her popularity with patients and family members, I decided to let her sassy and spirited voice speak on what evolved into her Facebook page by presenting most of the posts through JJ's eyes. From the early days online, I shared not only about JJ's visits with those who were dying, but with all who met her at the Hospice House. Occasionally, I took photos to help to tell her story. There have even been a couple of rare instances when JJ's interactions have been caught on video. I had originally posted one of these videos on her Facebook page less than two years after we opened the Hospice House. By that time, we had more followers, but it was still a small number of people, totaling less than seven hundred. Many of these included family members who continued to follow her after their loved ones died, some sharing photos and stories along the way. While remembering the death of a family member can be hard, reconnecting with a fun-loving and tender-hearted dog has been a highlight for many and continues to this day. For several, she was and continues to be a bright light during a very sad time.

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My primary role is as a therapy dog at our Hospice House in Oregon. You can think of me as a part-time residential dog, since I work twelve-hour shifts with The One In Charge (aka The Bossy One, TBO, BossyPants, CrankyPants, whatever the mood). She is a hospice nurse and my driver. We have a busy life, but I am the queen of self-care and spend a lot of time just having fun. On occasion, I am even a nanny to puppies. At work, I help support staff, volunteers, patients, families, and visitors. Often, I'm just a silly distraction and am good at insisting on a belly rub. Sometimes, I make the best one to support grieving loved ones, because words often are inadequate, but a dog's unconditional love provides so much. I have been in this role since we opened our inpatient hospice facility and have been an official therapy dog since I turned one and passed my test (barely). We have many staff, families, and volunteers who follow this page, so it's nice to balance the tough, heart-wrenching stuff with light-hearted moments and play. I'm told if humans led a life balanced like this, they would do well. Personally, I think bacon helps, A LOT!

The video I posted shows JJ up on the bed with a woman I will call Grace. Grace was in her nineties, was blind, and had never married, so she had no family members. She did have some very devoted caregivers, who had been doing their best to help this very headstrong, independent elderly woman live alone at home. Grace was incredibly frail and had some bruises on her arms, which wasn't surprising to us when we learned she'd had a big fall that sent her to the hospital. Grace's nails were nicely manicured, thanks to the attention of one of our CNAs several hours earlier. We had noticed old, chipped polish on her nails, so a fresh manicure was done to show her dignity, even if she was not aware of it. By the time she arrived at the Hospice House, Grace had no purposeful movement, something very common for people who are getting close to death. We learned she was fond of audiobooks, specifically poetry. The day I took the video, we had a reading of Yeats playing in the background. In hospice, we frequently tell family members that we believe people can still hear us toward the end of their lives, even if they are not able to acknowledge us the way they normally would. On this day, it was quiet toward the end of my shift, so I decided to sit at Grace's bedside so she wasn't alone. It is common for JJ to accompany me at times like this and she did that evening. I had been told Grace was fond of dogs, so when JJ indicated she would like to get up onto the bed, I carefully placed her next to Grace and then settled into my chair. JJ often will nudge her muzzle under someone's hand, even if they are not responding. I'm not sure how I thought to record this very private, intimate moment, but something about it was just incredibly touching to witness and I wanted to remember it. While I only got a couple of minutes on video, it was striking to watch JJ nudge these very thin fingers until, after a while, those fingers moved a bit in response marking Grace's first deliberate movement of the day, possibly her last deliberate movement ever. On the video, it even looked like Grace poked JJ's eye at one point, though from my vantage point JJ had her eyes tightly shut and wasn't poked or bothered by it. Shortly after this, JJ fell asleep with Grace's hand resting on her head. They stayed this way for close to twenty minutes, while I just sat at the bedside. JJ has been known to fall asleep during a bed visit, but only if I stayed nearby. At other times, she has only stay briefly before deciding to get off the bed. She clearly was very comfortable where she was. When we came back to work the next day, I found out Grace had died peacefully early in the morning, and I was thankful for our time together the day before.

Later, when I watched the video, I saw that I didn't capture any identifying information, which enabled me to share it without concerns of violating Grace's privacy. The few people who saw the video were very moved by it, as I had been.

Our days continued as usual, playing hard during our off time and going about our hospice care as we always had. JJ worked to perfect her mooching skills, and I was still sharing her antics and heartwarming moments with others online.

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BossyPants and I only worked a half-day today, and we happened to have visited someone getting close to his time to say goodbye. On these quiet days, we are able to spend time sitting with people who are alone, and sometimes I do a bed visit, like I did today. We had our music therapist's harp CD playing in the background, as it can help soothe and slow down the respiratory pattern of a person who is having difficulty breathing. There are many options used to help comfort people at times like this, including me. This gentleman loved dogs and loved talking to me when he was able. It might look like all I did was sleep on the job today, but it was good work I did for his family. I was honored to have been "his" dog for the day.

One day, nearly two years later, someone online asked me what I meant by "bed visit," so I re-shared the video I had posted of JJ and Grace. We were in the middle of working six out of seven days, our long monthly stretch. When I checked my phone on breaks, I noticed a puzzling jump in social media activity. Somehow, the video had gone viral in the two days since I re-shared it. Then, I received an e-mail request for a phone interview with King 5 News in Seattle at work. As a nurse, I am not used to having someone want to interview me, and I felt as though I stammered through my answers, still in disbelief that a news media organization wanted to hear the story behind my short video. Once the interview aired, I had many requests from others. During my day off I did interviews with Huffington Post, The Dodo, Three Million Dogs, and Fox 13 in Tampa. The following day there continued to be interest from various media outlets. USA Today, ABC World News Tonight,BuzzFeed Espanol, and Inside Edition all wanted to speak to me while I was at work. My supervisor called in another nurse to relieve me just so I could answer JJ's media requests. It happened to be a day when we had fewer patients, so we had a nurse on call that could easily cover my work. My supervisors and the hospice staff were all quite excited by the attention, and were very supportive of me taking time to field phone calls. They also had been keeping track of the sudden popularity of JJ's page and kept asking me: "how many followers now?" After a while, it was difficult to respond to the interview questions over and over without the answers sounding canned to my ears. At the same time, I was deluged by messages from curious viewers asking how to make their dog a therapy dog, requesting a visit for an ill relative (who was often overseas), and how to get involved with my organization.

E-mails and messages continued to roll in throughout the coming days, including from friends and family who reported seeing news about us. Apparently, a brief mention of the video ran on many local news stations across the country and was on the Today Show as well. It was fun to hear from a family member of one of our previous patients, who said: "We saw you on the local news down here in Atlanta. It's so awesome! My grandmother was in your hospice last year in September and I always remember JJ, and having to share my french fries with her. It's such an awesome thing you guys do. I am so proud that my grandmother was so well taken care of while she was there."

I got a text from my cousin showing me JJ's photo in an article in the August 26 edition of USA Today. After work, as my husband and I were headed to find a copy, I got a phone call from our on-call nurse, who handles all the calls for our home hospice patients after hours. "Someone from NBC is looking for you." What? By the end of the week, the story was featured across a wide variety of online media outlets around the world. A few of these international outlets included The Daily News and The Mirror in London, The New Indian Express in Delhi, as well as Good Morning America,AOL, The Examiner, I Heart Dogs,BarkPost, and People Pets Magazine. I think the most interesting one I saw was featured on the Daily Braille. It was incredibly appropriate to have an article written in Braille that described the interaction between JJ and a dying woman who was blind. To this day, I have never been able to go back far enough to figure out who shared the video and started the viral madness. It became clear that the story was shared widely across the world, touching people in areas where they don't even have hospice.

Along the way, I did my best to try to keep up with the messages and comments that were piling up, but I gave up when the video's comments reached 15,000. For the most part, the responses I saw were positive and memorable. Within one week, because of the video, JJ's page went from reaching approximately 5,000 people to over 27 million. I was not amazed at the response people had after watching this powerful example of the human-animal connection, but I was stunned by how far and how many it reached. It was clear people around the world were touched by their brief glimpse into the innate qualities of JJ that made her such a great therapy dog. Since I share my life with her, I get to see how much more there is to this loving, tender, generous, goofy, and fun-loving dog.

CHAPTER 2

When people meet JJ, one of the most common questions I get asked is how I got started with therapy dogs. As a child growing up in Montana, we had dogs, cats, horses, and even parakeets, so it's not a surprise I would have animals around me as an adult. In high school, when considering college options with my guidance counselor, I struggled for awhile trying to decide what career might interest me. As much as I loved animals, veterinary medicine never crossed my mind.

When looking through information from all the different colleges, I read about nursing school and was drawn to the idea of combining science with helping others. I had no one around me or in my family that was in nursing, other than an aunt who lived in Minnesota. I had never even considered it until I read about nursing schools in the different brochures. From that day forth, I knew I would be a nurse. It has turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made and my nursing career has been an excellent fit for my life. Approximately half of our graduating class of 99 students considered leaving the state to pursue post-high school options, including myself. I headed to Washington State and graduated four years later with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Pacific Lutheran University, class of 1988. I loved the combination of mountains and water in Washington State, and decided to stay in the greater Seattle area after graduation.

Six years later, I was working as a hospice nurse at an inpatient hospice facility in Washington State. I was familiar with the use of animals in therapeutic contexts, but was inspired by a local news story about volunteering with therapy dogs and thought it might be a good job for my first Golden Retriever, Booker. We took some classes, found it was a good fit, and went on to become a registered therapy dog team. We started volunteering at a transitional housing unit for mothers and their children after they had been at a shelter. We would visit weekly in the evening when the Moms would have their support group and the kids were all gathered together in a separate area. The kids ranged from young toddlers to young teenagers, but Booker was a calm Golden, who loved to be pet by anyone. He won everyone over, even those who had not been exposed to dogs and were timid in the beginning. Booker was helpful in diffusing any conflict within the group, and he had many confidential conversations with kids during our visits. When someone needed to talk to him, I would retreat to the end of my leash and turn my back, to give them privacy. It was common to peek over my shoulder and witness them both lying on the ground, face-toface, engaging in a full-fledged whispery conversation. It turns out dogs are excellent listeners, often much better than people, especially for these kids. Booker also was a great motivator, encouraging them to do things they were reluctant to do. The simple reward of being the one who got to throw a ball for him once a certain task was completed was often all the incentive they needed.

Our weekly visits became the highlight not only for the kids, but for their mothers as well. We got used to spending a little extra time at the end to let the Moms say hi to Booker when they collected their kids. It didn't take long for me to recognize the value therapy dogs bring when interacting with people during sad or stressful times.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "JJ's Journey"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Tracy Calhoun.
Excerpted by permission of Diversion Publishing Corp..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

These stories of an unforgettable and deeply intuitive Golden Retriever named JJ, as told by her fabulous handler Tracy, are shared with humor and heart. Many wonderful moments happen when working with therapy dogs and reading about JJ’s magic is an extraordinarily moving experience.” — Donna Frindt, Executive Director, Project Canine



“An emotionally satisfying and entertaining collection of tales not only between a dog and her human, but between this remarkable soul in a Golden Retriever suit and dozens of people in crisis—from hospice care to school shootings.” —Janet Velanovsky , Owner, Kaizen Pet Training & Behavior



“An inspiring memoir, JJ’s Journey illustrates the medical and spiritual benefits of the human-animal bond through JJ’s unwavering patience, love, and support for the hospice patients and their grieving families. JJ’s Journey brings to light that in our greatest time of need, every person can feel they are loved, honored, and mean something in this world thanks to the unconditional love that comes so naturally from a therapy dog’s heart.” —Colby Webb, Founder, Sav-a-Bull Rescue and author of Forty One Pit Bulls

From the Publisher