To the delight of patients and staff, local canine celebrities Bear and Brookie made their rounds at WashU Nephrology’s Village Square Dialysis Unit last week.
Bear and Brookie, a pair of Labrador mix pups rescued from a rural Missouri dump in 2023, became official University employees last year when they joined the WashU Police Department (WUPD) to provide comfort and support for the WashU community as therapy dogs.
“People here were smiling so big, it was wonderful to see!” says Thomas Gowen, Jr, RN, Nurse Manager at our newest dialysis facility, which opened in 2023.
One of the patients, Mark, insisted on a selfie with the popular duo. A former Barnes employee, now a patient, Mark has undergone dialysis in every one of our facilities.
According to Gowen, Bear and Brookie were extremely well-behaved and allowed everyone to enjoy a few minutes of laughing and smiling. Pictures from their visit to Village Square even landed on Bear and Brookie’s Instagram page!
Bear and Brookie, often referred to as the WUPD “comfort dogs,” provide their unique services to the entire University community. Read about this dynamic duo’s heartwarming backstory in The Record and in an article from KSDK, one of the local news outlets. For more info, contact: wupddogs@wustl.edu.
The Village Square Dialysis Center is located in the Multidisciplinary Building at 1 Village Square Shopping Center, Hazelwood, MO, 63042. The new state-of-the-art facility provides convenient kidney services to patients in the greater St. Louis area. “It’s super cool because the dialysis patients have access to other services, including a stellar pharmacy, while they are here,” says Gowen.
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