Lucky for dogs and community, Marlene Truesdell can’t say no

Marlene Truesdell (left) sometimes says no, but she gets roped in anyway.

Case in point: When she and husband Bart moved to Moneta seven years ago from the Washington, D.C. area, Truesdell was looking to relax. A retired dental hygienist, she'd  worked as a volunteer with therapy dogs for seven years through Delta Society, a national animal-assisted therapy nonprofit, serving as president of the local extension group.

Truesdell said it was enjoyable work, but she didn't want structure any longer. She wanted to do a visit here and there on her own time.

"When I came down here, I said: 'I'm not starting another group,'" she recalled .

No matter how hard she resisted, she didn't last long.

"Wendy Gibson, the librarian at Staunton River Middle School, said, 'I'd love to get a program started,'" recalled Truesdell. "I said, 'No, I didn't want to do that.'"

But before you could howl at the moon, Truesdell had established Blue Ridge P.E.T.S. (Pets in Education and Therapy Service), a local extension of Delta, within a year of arriving at the lake.

It started with only three or four teams, visiting area schools. Truesdell dug her heels in and said she wanted to keep the group small and easy to handle. No dice. Today, there are 10 active teams and Truesdell is looking for more.

"The libraries would love us to come more often," she said. "And we don't have enough people to even offer it to any of the other schools."

Truesdell may grumble a bit about how she didn't want to do this again, but when she talks about the service work, the passion is evident.

"I guess the dogs and Delta and visiting with kids is my first love," said Truesdell. "You get so much more back than you put into it."

Blue Ridge P.E.T.S. teams — a team is made up of a dog and its handler — visit Moneta and Dudley elementary schools and the two lake libraries where children can read books out loud to the dogs. The teams also participate in the SML Good Neighbors summer programs.

Truesdell said the children shed their inhibitions when a dog is introduced to the reading environment.

"You give them about 15 or 20 minutes of interaction with the dog, reading the story," said Truesdell. "Nobody is correcting them; nobody is laughing at them."

All the while, week after week, bonds develop between the children and the dogs, she said.

The Truesdells watched their first two therapy dogs bond with hundreds of people in schools, hospitals and nursing homes. Clair, a chocolate Lab, and her daughter, Bianca, a yellow Lab, earned their Delta stripes through National Capital Therapy Dogs in the Washington, D.C., area. Clair died a few years ago and Bianca, 14, retired last year.

But the Truesdells still volunteer, having added two more dogs to their brood. They adopted Elcee from a high-kill shelter in Campbell County shortly after Clair died, and Kalypso, a Jack Russell / Shih Tzu mix, from a high-kill shelter in West Virginia about a year ago.

"When we took Elcee home, she was afraid to go through doorways, she was afraid of people, she was afraid to ride in the car and she threw up all the time in the car," recalled Truesdell.

It wasn't easy for Kalypso either.

"She was scared of her own shadow and wouldn't even come out of her crate for like two days," said Truesdell. "We'd take her outside and she'd collapse on the ground."

But dedication, training and a lot of love brought both shelter puppies  out of their shells. Both passed the Delta Society evaluations when they were about a year old. And now, they follow in Clair and Bianca's paw prints.

Truesdell said seeing people benefit from being around  therapy dogs has been a rewarding experience.

While working with brain-damaged patients at Carilion in Roanoke, patients would put clips in Bianca's fur to work on their fine motor skills or blow little fuzzy balls off her fur to develop lung support. Truesdell said she'd see patients get out of their wheelchairs and stand for two or three minutes petting Bianca, when they usually could only manage to stand for 30 seconds.

A few experiences stick out in Truesdell's mind. There was  the 5-year-old girl who wouldn't lay down for her chemotherapy treatment and wouldn't stop crying.

"So we put Bianca in the bed with her," said Truesdell. "The little girl relaxed, put her arms around Bianca and stopped crying."

For her full 20-minute chemotherapy treatment, the little girl lay still, playing with Bianca's ears.

In a book, written by an SML resident, about using animal-assisted therapy for autism, one chapter  is dedicated to the yellow Lab and Truesdell. It recalls their greatest success story, said Truesdell.

Huddleston resident Merope Pavlides  chronicled the story of a 10-year-old autistic girl who overcame her phobia of dogs over nine months with Truesdell and Bianca in "Animal-Assisted Interventions for Individuals with Autism."

"The first time we went, we just sat in the lobby of the school," recalled Truesdell. "The girl was brought into the lobby and she screamed and ran away."

But over the twice-weekly visits, the girl came around. She could stand within a few feet of Bianca. Then, she could feed her, walk her and pet her. Seven years later, Truesdell still keeps in touch with the girl's mother. The dog phobia never returned.

It's experiences like those that keep Truesdell involved, even when she wants to say no.

"The dogs add something that a person can't add," said Truesdell. "I'm just there to sort of hold onto the other end of the leash and the dog does all the bonding."

For more information or to get involved with Blue Ridge P.E.T.S., contact Marlene Truesdell at 297-2031 or marlene@truesdell.org. www.deltasociety.org.