Kanzu is a registered therapy dog and does lots of therapy visits with our local Love On A Leash Chapter. However, long before he became a registered therapy dog he would visit with Linda’s speech therapy clients. Recently, Kanzu has been busy doing lots of speech therapy. He has become an active part of Linda’s therapy practice.

Justin is a 7 year old boy who was born with a syndrome that has a very large tongue and a cleft palate called Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome. Justin’s tongue was so large that it impacted his ability to breath, swallow and eat and speak. It was surgically ‘reduced’ by a long-time friend of Linda’s, Dr. Jeff Marsh in St Louis who has extensive experience with this procedure.

Even after surgery, Justin continued to have a severe speech impairment. The next clinical question for Justin was whether a surgery for his cleft palate would make it easier for him to speak. Dr. Marsh arranged for Linda to evaluate Justin and work with him to determine if more surgery was indicated and to assist Justin in improving his speech.

When Linda and Justin met, he did not move his mouth or tongue for any sounds. It was a big job to get Justin motivated to move his tongue and lips to make speech sounds. Enter Kanzu the speech therapy assistant. Justin met Kanzu and soon repeat visits became the motivator and reinforcer for speech therapy drills. When Justin met Kanzu, like so many of the children we visit, his first impulse was to climb right on him and try to ride him. Kanzu was a very patient assistant and allowed lots of hugging and snuggling and even a quick mount. When we shared the photo of Justin and Kanzu, Dr. Marsh commented; “I love Justin’s enthusiasm and Kanzu’s tolerance”. Kanzu is a fantastic speech therapy assistant and seems to love the attention. And best yet, Justin is improving rapidly and speaking more. He especially loves to watch videos of Kanzu doing agility and calls out commands to Kanzu as he watches along with the run…..he gets great speech practice as Justin tells Kanzu: over, table, jump, climb it, tire, tunnel!