Once, when the two 'doctors' (our most recent emeritus docs are Butchy and Rumford, and this is a story about them..) were working on a unit together, an older woman resident let me know emphatically that she didn't want either of those dogs near her. She said she was afraid of them. Since we were working with a group of people, we couldn't just leave, and she didn't want to be excluded, so we all stayed together, but respected her boundaries.
Our work, by the way, is for the dog-docs to make personal chair-side visits while I play music that takes the residents/patients on a uniquely personal (and sometimes sentimental) journey. Pain has a way of disappearing (or at least diminishing) when patients are in the company of good memories.
Before the end of the hour long session, the lady who was afraid of dogs had asked a nurse to bring her a small cup of water. And there she was, holding that little dixie-cup while Dr. Love delicately drank from it. "He was thirsty!" she told the rest of us.
Dr. Love, with his unique set of transferrable skills, helped that patient get in touch with hers.
Coming from the track as an adult racing dog, spending life confined to a small space most of the time when he wasn't actually racing, he probably saw other dogs (friends, maybe) get injured or lose their lives. He had to let many people he may never have gotten to know or trust feed him, groom him, and give him medical care.
Dr. Love transferred those skills, on that day and every other day I've worked with him, into answering the needs of his patients, by letting his patient take care of him.
Sometimes, o.k. every time people discover I was a police officer (for 18 years) before becoming a music practitioner, they respond the same way: "That's quite a change in career direction...!" And actually, I have to say... It's not.
Like the greyhounds, I have transferrable skills that move well from what I did before to what I do now. (more about those later...)
Transferrable skills are those abilities you've picked up throughout life and put to use, in your unique way of doing things. Something I learned from those years of police work was that putting together the unexpected often resulted in some more-positive-than-usual results.
Just like the lady who was afraid of dogs and the therapy-greyhound... they discovered they could help each other.
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