Happy Horse Program Visits Erie County Medical Center

Our horses bring happiness to hospital patients!

- October 11, 2017

As featured in the Buffalo Rising blog

Animals have the ability to calm our nerves. They make us happy. They refocus our thoughts. And they help us to get healthy, mind, body and spirit.

Earlier this week, ECMC hosted a “Therapeutic Mini-Horse Visit.” The miniature horses Quinton and Lilly were brought right into the hospital, where patients were able to interact with them. The special visit brought a lot of smiles to the faces of those who were looking for some good news to walk in through the front door. This particular bundle of good news happened to walk into the Nursing facilities in the Centers Health Care on four legs.

The therapeutic visit was considered a big success, and will hopefully lead to other animal visits in the future. For some people, there is nothing more enjoyable than being able to pet and hug animals. Unfortunately, hospitals are often times the last place that anyone would ever expect an encounter of this nature.

Let’s give a hand, paw, or hoof to ECMC for stepping up and thinking about how patients would react to a visit from these lovely creatures. Instead of saying “neigh” to the idea, they opened their minds and their doors to the animals, thus soothing the souls of their appreciative patients