Where the Trail Grows Faint: A Year in the Life of a Therapy Dog Team

"This is Hannah," Lynne Hugo introduces her chocolate Labrador retriever to an aged woman in a wheelchair at the Golden View Nursing Home. "Would you like to pat her?"
 
"I don't know," she responds warily. "Dogs are complicated."
 
So, of course, is life, especially as the years accumulate and the body declines. In fact, the most painful complications are those that Hugo hopes to ease with Hannah, her exuberant therapy dog. What Hugo receives in return, unexpectedly, is an outpo…