Tom Tolen / news@whmi.com

Mt. Brighton will have its first-ever therapy dog this winter season.

Snickers, a 3-year-old Golden Mountain Doodle, has been training with handler Linda Barthel, a ski patroller who is in the National Ski Patrol Hall of Fame, has been working out with Snickers this fall and got him certified for the upcoming season. Snickers will also soon be working with occupational therapy patients at Chelsea Hospital as part of his orientation.

According to the Ann Arbor News, Snickers is one of two therapy dogs who will be housed at Southern Michigan ski resorts. The other dog is Lola, under the tutelage of ski patroller Erica Chapman at the Cannonsburg Ski area near Grand Rapids. Barthel and Chapman are heading a therapy dog pilot program that may end up going nationwide.

National Ski Patrol CEO Stephanie Cox was inspired by what Barthel and Chapman and their dogs were doing when she attended their session at a conference this past summer.

According to the Ann Arbor paper, she was “impressed by their professionalism, the approach they took and the initial results." Chapman added, “I thought we should really try to roll this out nationally.” She hopes to have the program in place nationwide at ski resorts by next season, using Barthel’s and Chapman’s policies and procedures as a template.