“First she got lethargic, then she stopped walking and standing up and when she crawled, she fell on her face,” Kim recalls. “By the time we got the diagnosis, she was barely eating and limp as a rag doll, lifeless.”

Samantha had surgery to remove the tumour – which was benign – and spent two-and-a-half months at SickKids. When she came to Bloorview for inpatient rehab “all she could do was lift her shoulders off the pillow,” Kim says. She was receiving nutrition through a nasal feeding tube and the trauma of her illness and hospitalization had left her anxious and withdrawn.

It wasn’t until Samantha participated in a pet visiting program at Bloorview that Kim says she saw the daughter she knew return.

“As soon as she saw the dogs, I saw the sparkle in her eye and the excitement and the smiles and she started to say ‘doggie’ again, which she’d lost at SickKids. When I put her on the ground, she started bouncing around like crazy and touching the dogs.

“I can’t even explain in words how important it was,” Kim says. “It gave me a sense of hope, of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel: my daughter was coming back.”

For the next couple of months Samantha participated in intensive physical, occupational and speech therapy and never missed a weekly pet session.

The pet visiting program is run by therapeutic recreation and volunteer resources staff and made possible by 27 volunteers and their dogs and cats.

Samantha’s now eating on her own, walking with support, cruising on furniture, “and laughing and chatting like there’s no tomorrow,” Kim says. “When we first came to Bloorview, I never could have imagined her doing so well.”

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