Skeezer, by Elizabeth Yates

At some point before this book was published (in 1973, the year I was born), the Children's Psychiatric Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan became the first American hospital to have a live-in therapy dog. Once the hospital got the idea, a veterinarian selected Skeezer, a five-month-old mutt, from the university's animal research lab; she had previously been a stray. Therapy dogs were not a thing then; the vet picked her because she seemed friendly and smart, and while she was trained in terms of what she could and could not do on the hospital premises, she wasn't trained in any specific techniques in terms of interacting with the child patients. Skeezer just had a knack for knowing what each child needs, whether it's tender cuddling or boisterous play. And Skeezer has her own doggy needs. (The doctors eventually figure out that she needs not just her own space where no one will bug her, but days off.)

Each chapter follows a different child patient and their interactions with Skeezer, but the book as a whole is chronological and follows a very loose throughline about the particular group of children who are there. (They're real children with their names and identifying details changed.) It concludes with Skeezer still going strong, and most of the kids going home and a new bunch of kids coming in. The children's diagnoses and the theoretical framework for their treatment is of the time, but their circumstances - child abuse, psychosis, anxiety, etc - are universal. Being able to spend long periods in a residential facility with good food, therapy, individual attention, interaction with other kids, and of course Skeezer are very healing. I don't think that's something that's available in the US anymore, except perhaps for the top .1%.

This is a sweet, delicate, bittersweet book with sweet, delicate, bittersweet illustrations. The afterword says that the artist, Joan Drescher, used her children and their friends as models.

Of interest to osprey_archer, Yates is otherwise known for winning the 1961 Newbery Medal for Amos Fortune, Free Man.