{"id":1826,"date":"2012-03-20T04:07:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T17:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/inthenews\/?p=1826"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:52:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T03:52:30","slug":"the-rch-wonder-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/the-rch-wonder-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"The RCH wonder dog"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1834\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1834\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/2012\/03\/20\/the-rch-wonder-dog\/zeke-and-ralf\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1834\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1834\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/files\/2012\/03\/Zeke-and-Ralf.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"160\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1834\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ralf the giant schnauzer at the RCH with patient Zeke Harrison. Photo courtesy of the Herald Sun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ralf the giant schnauzer has the reputation of being something of a miracle worker, and he lived up to it during his ward rounds at the Royal Children&#8217;s Hospital yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Ralf got two-year-old Claire Couwenberg to walk for the first time in the five days since her surgery to remove a cancerous kidney.<\/p>\n<p>And he brought a smile to 15-month-old Zeke Harrison, who has a rare genetic disorder where his body is unable to break down protein and too much can kill him.<\/p>\n<p>RCH visiting volunteer program co-ordinator Brenda Kittelty said dogs now visited sick children throughout the week instead of on just one day, and they went to five wards instead of just one.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The dogs bring normality to children in an\u00a0abnormal, difficult and stressful situation,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"RCH wonder dog\" href=\"http:\/\/www.heraldsun.com.au\/news\/more-news\/dogged-doctor-helps-toddler-walk-brings-smile-to-sick-kids\/story-fn7x8me2-1226304518094\">Click here <\/a>to read the full story on the Herald Sun website.<\/p>\n<p>Words by Marianne Betts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ralf the giant schnauzer has the reputation of being something of a miracle worker, and he lived up to it during his ward rounds at the Royal Children&#8217;s Hospital yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7198,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-friday-appeal","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1826"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1832,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions\/1832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}