Every once and a while, lucky dogs are welcomed into an elite group. Their initiation is completed beneath Stanford Hospital's emergency department inside the Security Dispatch Center. Here, they have their likeness printed onto a medical center ID. One woman is ultimately responsible for this canine cabal. Her name is Francie Souza.

Souza is the hospital's director of patient representation. Her tasks include coordinating the dog owners who volunteer to visit hospital patients with their pets in a program called PAWS, short for Pet Assisted Wellness at Stanford.

Before Francie Souza started the PAWS program in 1997, inpatients had to settle for photographs of four-legged friends. Now the real deal pads down the halls of Stanford Hospital.

"The PAWS program is a very small portion of what I do," Souza said. "But it's a fun aspect of my job; I've always been an animal lover. It's amazing what the animals can do for people. They're the opposite of all the high-medical gear that surrounds patients."

Because her father was a U.S. Air Force test pilot, Souza's family moved around quite a bit. You'd think it would get in the way of owning pets. But her family bought a golden retriever in England and he traveled with them to Ohio, New Mexico and California. Souza also discovered a love of horseback riding while her father was stationed in the western United States.

Her career interests, however, took Souza in a different direction. Settling in Los Angeles, she worked in advertising. About 16 years ago, she moved to the Bay Area and started working at Stanford Hospital. "My advertising agency experience with customer service and publicity were a good mesh with how Stanford approaches the same issues."

Souza has spent her Stanford years in the Office of Community and Patient Relations. "Basically, we're here as a resource for patients. We try to ensure that their needs are met," she said. "We do complaint tracking for the hospital and the clinic. It can be anything from patients not being happy with medical care to being confused by the parking lot signs. Everybody wants our patients and families to be happy here, so it's really just getting the right staff involved."

In 1997, Souza started PAWS to fill a need she saw while visiting patients. Animal lovers would often bring pictures of their pets and put them on their hospital room bulletin boards. Some nurses were requesting animals to visit patients as well. While Souza couldn't sneak in every Spot, Fido or Lassie, she wondered if it would be possible to have prescreened animals visit.

With the assistance of B.J. Grosvenor, a former Stanford recreational therapist, Souza approached a local group called the Peninsula Pet Assisted Therapy Team for help. This volunteer organization had been visiting other hospitals with pets certified by a dog-training group called the Delta Society. "As part of the Delta evaluation, pets go through a maze of wheelchairs and walkers and things clattering down by them to represent busy hospital corridors," Souza said.

The original volunteer group still helps Souza, but she's added other volunteers and their pets. Now she has a corgi, a spaniel, dalmatians, soft-coated wheaton terriers, yellow labs, golden retrievers and plain old mutts helping out. "The bigger dogs, you know, they can put their head right on the bed. The little ones we can hold up or put a draw sheet next to the patient and set them right there."

The dogs were first used in the comprehensive medical unit which treats patients with both psychological and physical illnesses. These days, dogs visit a group therapy session every other Friday.

The doctors have found that the animals help patients relax, focus and interact with others. "One germ-phobic patient tore off her mask and gloves and got down on the ground to play with a dog," Souza recalled.

More recently, the dogs have started work in the comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation unit. Patients recovering from stroke or other traumatic injuries can practice simple motor skills by petting animals. There are also occasional special requests from nurses in places like the orthopedic unit.

Right now, Souza has just enough dogs to answer current need. But she might expand PAWS if she gets more requests from other departments. If PAWS ventures into new territory, many more dogs will get their chance to join the canine-care squad.