Jean Meade admits that she’s more comfortable with animals than humans. At the age of 42, Meade co-founded the non-profit organization, The Human-Animal Bond, which conducts service dog research, provides education, and trains service dogs through its Hearts of Gold program. Meade, a One Health Initiative proponent, has found joy working with four-legged and two-legged creatures.
At 52 Meade founder of Cheat Lake Animal Hospital attended medical school. She also completed a masters in public health which she credits with helping coalesce all of her formal education and experiential learning into a deeper understanding of and passion for One Health.
Early successes include the development of four West Virginia University courses in service dog training and civic engagement, a state-of-the-art training center at West Virginia University and a veteran-for-veterans’ service dog training program at a local Federal Correctional Institute. The veterans service dog training resulted in a Department of Labor-approved apprenticeship program.
“It’s so gratifying to see the impact dogs have on people’ lives, trainers and recipients.”
“It’s so gratifying to see how people’s’ lives change when they’re matched with the right service animals,” says Meade, a veterinarian and physician who’s also an adjunct professor with the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design at West Virginia University (the college is a partner of Hearts of Gold). At 52 Meade attended medical school, including a family medicine internship and occupational medicine residency. She also completed a masters in public health which helped coalesce all of her formal education and experiential learning into a deeper understanding of and passion for One Health. She tells the story of a wheelchair-bound man whose life was transformed by a service dog. “He would laugh and say, ‘Before, everyone seemed embarrassed to approach me, but my service dog is a chick magnet, I wish I had him when I was single. Additionally, he has allowed me to regain some of my independence. I used to hate for my wife to help me with my shoes but now the dog does it.
“My experience in a veterans’ PTSD inpatient unit instilled in me a desire to give back to those who have sacrificed.”
Since 2006, Hearts of Gold has placed over 50 dogs with a broad range of people including veterans and other individuals with debilitating illnesses. Now, says Meade, the goal is to increase those numbers. “We want to focus on placing more dogs because the need is so great,” she says. “It takes about two years to train a dog, and we currently have 23 dogs in training for potential placement.”
Meade sees the Hearts of Gold as a win-win-win. The program not only provides service dogs for those in need, but it also provides hands-on educational opportunities for pre-veterinary and other students that may use dogs in their future professions and provides rehabilitative therapy to incarcerated veterans.
Over the years student involvement with community awareness programs has greatly increased civic engagement. The program has allowed incarcerated veterans to continue to support their comrades in arms.
“The program initially attracted pre-veterinary students; we now have students from almost every discipline,“she says. “A young woman who went into occupational therapy wants to use a dog in her practice. A physical therapist might use a dog to help children flex and extend their elbows by throwing a ball or brushing him. People are looking for new ways to integrate animal-assisted therapy.”
Follow the Hearts of Gold Program on Facebook: HeartsofGoldWV.
With Hearts of Gold, if dogs don’t have the right temperament or skill set for service work, they become therapy or companion dogs. The clients can be unexpected—such as WVU’s engineering school.
“Engineering is a stressful curriculum,” says Meade. “They wanted a dog to help students feel more welcome and at home. The dog spends most of the day in the learning center and may be called to classes and faculty meetings to de-stress things.”
Meade experienced her own human-animal bond at an early age. Growing up on a farm in rural Virginia, her companions included dogs, horses, cats, cattle. She later studied at William & Mary and Virginia Tech, and traveled to Kenya for a year as a Ph.D. candidate to study baboons. After a year at a neurobiology and behavior lab at Cornell University, she went to veterinary school at the University of Georgia.
Moving Forward: The Jasmine Project, A One Health Initiative
Meade’s latest passion is the development of a intergenerational community called The Jasmine Project: a living-learning community to assist those in need:including seniors without family support, children aging out of foster care, and single veterans with children. The community will provide housing, emotional support, and even vocational programs. “My inspiration came primarily from a 76-year-old woman with early Alzheimer’s and an 11-year-old boy living in an orphanage,” says Meade. “Both were living in social isolation, and were suffering from depression, but longing for a sense of inclusion.”
The project will transform lives—just like Hearts of Gold. “Helping people to re-engage with the world has been phenomenal,” she says. “It’s just a blast.”
Follow Human-Animal Bond on Facebook: HumanAnimalBondWV.
Follow Hearts of Gold on Facebook: HeartsofGoldWV.
Ken Budd’s writing credits include The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian, CityLab, The Washington Post, AARP The Magazine and many more. He writes the “Everyday Heroes” column for The Saturday Evening Post and he’s the author of the award-winning memoir The Voluntourist. Ken’s work has won gold awards from the Society of American Travel Writers and the North American Travel Journalists Association. He has appeared on programs such as NBC’s Today, The CBS Early Show, and CBS This Morning, and he’s the host of 650,000 Hours, a new digital series that will debut in 2019. You can follow Ken on Twitter and Facebook.
Hearts of Gold raises, trains, and places dogs to assist people with disabilities. Based in Morgantown, West Virginia, the nonprofit organization provides the dogs with two years of training and conducts research to determine the most efficient training methods. Hearts of Gold partners with some of the top universities that use therapy dogs, including West Virginia University, Emory University, the University of California-Berkley, and Columbia University.