CHICAGO — Rob Garofalo was devastated. He’d built his medical and research career on helping young AIDS patients. Then he learned that he, too, was HIV-positive. The news came after he’d already survived kidney cancer and a breakup with his longtime partner.
Try as he might, the doctor could not heal himself, at least not emotionally. Then he got a dog. It was a little Yorkshire terrier he named Fred. And everything changed.
The doctor, who’s helped save many AIDS patients, knows it sounds crazy that the companionship and simple needs of a pet could help him cope with his disease and pull him out of depression.
And Garofalo began to realize that he was far from the only person with HIV — or any number of other diseases — who had been helped by a dog. And in that human-canine bond, he saw new purpose and an opportunity to grow his charity’s reach.
He began a project called “When Dogs Heal,” with the help of a dog photographer named Jesse Freidin and a Chicago-based writer named Zach Stafford. It tells the stories of HIV-positive people and their dogs in an exhibit launching in Chicago on Tuesday, which is World AIDS Day, and also in New York City two days later.
Garafalo now heads the Center for Gender, Sexuality and HIV Prevention at Lurie Children’s Hospital.
