Back in 2019, there was a program that launched at Children's Hospital Colorado that aimed to ease fears and bring comfort and smiles to children while in the hospital. It was spearheaded by Ralph M.D. who is currently set to make his final rounds through the hospital soon.

According to Children's Hospital Colorado, Ralph M.D. (or as I like to call him, Dr. Dog) has helped over 19,000 patients during his time at the hospital. He not only offered comfort but also demonstrated medical procedures to make them seem less frightening to children.

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Dr. Ralph retired recently after many successful rounds of comforting kids and families in need. As a parent, you never want to see your child in a hospital but when it happens, to know that there are wonderful doctors tending to your child (both with 2 and 4 legs) is an incredible comfort.

Ralph was practically a pup when he started his career helping kids in need and over that amount of time, he's seen and helped thousands of kids feel loved, calm and brave during their hospital stays.

After years of helping kids, Ralph himself needed some medical attention after he wasn't feeling well. So he, along with his longtime trainer Kizzy, had some tests done on him to figure out what was wrong.

The results came back showing that Ralph was indeed pretty sick himself and needed some medical attention so Kizzy took him to the best animal hospital where doctors immediately fell in love with "Dr. Dog".

After all of the times, Ralph was there for the sick kids, it was time for HIM to get loved on during a difficult time and that's exactly what happened as doctors worked hard to get him back to feeling his best.

After years of watching those kids at Children's Hospital face their fears, Ralph bravely fought through his problems and now, every now and again Ralph will make a couple of rounds at the hospital, but the news isn't all good for Ralph as his doctors said that his sickness will never really go away.

Some days when he feels good, he still visits kids at Children's Hospital, other days he just can't do it.

According to his doctors, Ralph's sickness will eventually cause him to die, so Kizzy has decided that Ralph is going to spend his last days doing all of the things that he loves to do like hiking, rolling over and over and over and over...well, you get the idea, he loves to roll and...eat a bunch of his favorite treats, like bananas.

As Ralph winds down from his career of helping kids, the tradition continues at the hospital with these other puppies in their medical dog program, and you can check them out HERE.

We here at Townsquare Media would like Ralph to know that we're thinking of him and thank him for his years of service helping children.

We love you Ralph, a.k.a. Dr. Dog.

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