Science tells us that dog ownership is linked to myriad health benefits. Dogs can help lower anxiety and loneliness, increase cognitive function and promote better heart health for their human companions.
But some dogs have the power to perform miracles. Just ask the ladies at Mutts on a Mission, a Goodyear-based nonprofit whose therapy dogs bring comfort and joy to those who need it most.
The dogs and their human companions visit hospitals, dementia wards and infusion rooms. They visit elementary school children struggling to read, and they visit children in institutions, sent away for behavioral issues.
Everywhere they go, the dogs can light up even the darkest place.
When Kathleen Tyryfter started the group in 2008, she began bringing her dog, a coton de Tulear named Cooper, to visit dementia patients in care homes.
She said people would ask her why she bothered bringing the dogs to people who couldn’t even remember the names of their grandchildren.
“People would say to me, ‘Well, why do you even bother going into dementia (wards)? They don’t know,’ Oh yes, they do,” Tyryfter said.
She said something about the dog’s presence could reach them in ways a human can’t.
“For that one second, and it might only be one second...they are so present that you think to yourself, ‘I’ve just experienced a miracle.’”
A group of core members of Mutts on Mission sat around a large wooden table at the Tuscany Falls Clubhouse in PebbleCreek in late September talking about the work they do with the dogs.
The four women chimed in to tell stories about the pups, some of whom were perched on their laps or lying patiently under the table, emerging only occasionally for a reassuring head scratch.
The women describe their dogs’ funny personalities and everyday goofiness.
But the volunteers agreed when the dogs are working, the dynamic changes. These dogs are all business.
“They know their purpose when they’re working,” volunteer April Phillips said. “When they have that vest (on) and they’re going to work, it’s like a light switch.”
As she spoke, Phillips’ 10-year-old shih tzu Chippy sat patiently on her lap. He has shiny black eyes and a snub nose, and the only thing he loves more than food, Phillips said, is his job.
She found out Chippy was a special kind of dog before she had even heard of Mutts on a Mission. Back then, she’d often bring Chippy to visits with a woman she was caring for.
One day, the woman’s family called to tell Phillips that she was actively dying and was asking for Chippy. Phillips brought the dog to the house and placed him on the bed.
“And all the sudden family members come in and they’re bringing in Wendy’s and McDonald’s,” Phillips said.
“Oh God,” she thought. “He’s gonna smell the fries and that’s it.”
Ordinarily, Chippy would beg for the food, Phillips said. But this time, he didn’t even acknowledge it was there.
“It was then that I knew, ‘OK, he knows a bigger purpose that I don’t know,” she said.
Soon after, Phillips came across an ad for Mutts on a Mission.
The dogs seem able to initiate all kinds of miracles, big and small.
Tyryfter remembers a time when she brought Cooper to a Blessing of the Paws, where therapy animals receive a blessing from a pastor.
Tyryfter said shortly afterward, a nurse told her that she was needed upstairs. A woman named Mary, who knew Cooper from his many hospital visits, was in a coma. Mary had a dog like Cooper when she was a child, and she loved her visits with him.
Her husband thought that if anything could get her out of the coma, it would be Cooper.
Tyryfter put Cooper on the bed, taking Mary’s hand and placing it on the dog’s soft, white fur.
“He’s here to see you, and he wants you to wake up,” she told Mary. “He wants you to visit with him.”
Tyryfter recounted the story choking back tears. Mary had opened her eyes.
Cooper passed away a few years ago. Now, Tyryfter has Jasper, who’s also a coton de Tulear, just like his beloved predecessor.
The three-year-old pup, nicknamed “the jazz man,” may not have spontaneously roused someone out of a coma (yet) but he’s part of another program that some may find just as incredible.
A few years ago, the group heard about a program that uses therapy dogs to help elementary school students struggling to learn to read.
The eight-week program pairs students with a therapy dog and human volunteer. Instead of reading to a human, however, the students would read to the dog.
When MOAM president Kathleen Moloney first heard about the program, she thought, “Well this is cute, but does it work?”
Her skepticism disappeared when she and her therapy dog Finnley began working with the children.
Moloney recalls a teacher telling her that one student’s reading skills had improved 400% by the end of the two-month program.
Moloney said rather than correcting the kids herself, she’d have Finnley — who looks straight from a Cesar dog food ad — guide them.
“I’d say, ‘Well Finnley thinks we should read that sentence over again’” and “‘Finnley wants to know what this means.’”
The approach worked, Moloney said, in part because the program provides individual, one-on-one attention. But also because the dogs provide a comforting, judgment-free environment.
“The dog doesn’t judge them,” Tyryfter said.
The group worked with elementary school students in Litchfield Park, Goodyear and Buckeye.
Everywhere they went, the kids formed a special bond with the dog they were paired with.
When Tyryfter let the kids know that Cooper had died, the kids brought her cards saying how much he meant to them. When she got to her car that day she said, “I just sat there and sobbed. But they loved him...They just love your dogs.”
The group’s involvement with the program ended when the COVID-19 pandemic closed the schools. The volunteers are hopeful that they will soon be able to return to the classrooms.
The pandemic also forced MOAM to cut back on a lot of other volunteer activities that involved the sick and elderly.
No one misses the work more than the dogs.
Volunteer Debbie McCully said the first time she brought her therapy dog London out of quarantine, the ordinarily calm 8-year-old golden retriever began to whine and cry when she caught a glimpse of children playing.
She and her husband just watched her and cried.
The volunteers are waiting to hear calls back from some of the treatment centers, libraries and schools they used to bring the dogs. But even though their operations are scaled back for the time being, the organization isn’t slowing down. The group expects to evaluate 11 potential MOAM therapy dogs in the month of October alone.
Tyryfter can see why so many people want to be a part of it. “There’s nothing better than this,” she said. “There just isn’t.”
Madeline Ackley is a Phoenix-area native who joined Independent Newsmedia in July 2021 as a reporter for the Goodyear-Litchfield Park Independent. She is passionate about delivering hyperlocal coverage of issues that matter to her community.
She has previously covered immigration, policing, homelessness, veteran’s issues and breaking news and her byline has appeared in The Arizona Mirror, The Arizona Republic, The Phoenix Business Journal and Cronkite News.
Madeline is passionate about animal welfare and the environment. She loves to cook, travel and spend time with her family.
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