The two-mile walk that begins Saturday morning across from Pukalani Stables in Waimea is a small, local thing — no registration, no fee, no sign-up sheet, just leashes and an 8 a.m. start, rain or shine. But it belongs to something considerably larger. Queen's North Hawai'i Community Hospital is one of many groups around the world taking part in the World's Largest Pet Walk, an annual fundraiser run by Pet Partners, the national organization that registers therapy animals and their human handlers.
The event was originally scheduled for September 26, the official global walk day. Hurricane Nolo forced a postponement, and the hospital rescheduled it for October 10. The format survived the delay intact: community members and their pets are invited to join the hospital's own pet therapy teams on a two-mile route, and anyone who shows up without an animal is welcome to walk alongside one of the therapy dogs instead.
The pitch behind the walk is straightforward and backed by a growing body of research. Walking daily improves cardiovascular fitness and lowers the risk of heart disease and stroke. Studies have also found that people who walk with an animal are more likely to meet physical activity recommendations — the dog, or the miniature horse, or whatever else is on the other end of the leash, functions as a gentle enforcer of good habits.
"The World's Largest Pet Walk is a wonderful opportunity to come together as a community while celebrating the special bond between people and animals," said Lynn Scully, spokesperson for Queen's North Hawai'i Community Hospital. "Bring your pet, or enjoy the walk with one of our friendly therapy animals."
Scully is not a disinterested spokesperson. She is a pet therapy volunteer herself, and the animal she brings to work is not a dog. Darby, her 16-year-old miniature horse, is a regular presence at the hospital, trotting through the corridors every other week to visit patients and staff. In a town where horses are ordinary — Waimea is the center of Hawai'i's ranching culture, and mounted riders are a common sight around the Parker Ranch Center parking lot — a miniature horse in a hospital still registers as something out of the ordinary. "But to see a miniature horse in the hospital, that's something extra special," Leslie Boteilho, the hospital's ambulatory services coordinator, told Big Island Now in 2023.
Darby and Adaka, a Brittany spaniel mix owned by volunteer Marilyn Shigetani of Volcano, were the first animals on the hospital's rebuilt pet therapy roster when the program restarted on November 6, 2023, after a hiatus forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. On each visit, the pair see 50 to 60 patients. "There's now decades of research that's been done that shows the physical benefits of animal interactions, as well as the psychological," Scully said at the time. The National Institutes of Health has pointed to decreased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, lower blood pressure, and slower heart rates as measurable effects of interacting with animals.
The walk's starting point has its own history. Pukalani Stables takes its name from a historic place name of Old Waimea, and the building was designed and built in 1909 by A.W. Carter, a longtime Parker Ranch trustee. It is regarded as the birthplace of the Hawaiian cowboy — the paniolo — on Parker Ranch, and today it houses the Paniolo Heritage Center and the Nā Wahine Holo Lio Pa'u Museum, which honors the region's pa'u riders. The heritage center is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday. Walkers gathering across from the stables on Saturday morning will be standing at the edge of the very ground where Hawai'i's cattle culture began.
The global walk itself is younger than the stables by more than a century. Pet Partners, then known as the Delta Society, was founded in 1977 by a group of veterinarians, physicians, and animal-care professionals — among them Leo Bustad and Michael McCulloch — who had begun to document what earlier generations had taken on faith: that animals make people not just happier but healthier. The organization, which later took the Pet Partners name, became the leading registrar of therapy animal teams in the United States, sending volunteers and their animals into hospitals, nursing homes, schools, and veterans' facilities.
The World's Largest Pet Walk grew out of that mission as a signature fundraiser. Since 2018, it has raised more than half a million dollars to register therapy animal teams and bring animals to people in need. The structure is deliberately loose: participants are invited to walk any distance, on any path, at any time on the official day, whether that means a solo hike or a group stroll through town. There is no registration fee, though walkers are encouraged to set up fundraising pages, and those who raise $125 earn a walk t-shirt and a pet bandanna. Wellness Pet Company sponsors the event.
That looseness is what makes a Waimea version possible at all. The hospital's walk requires no advance notice, no paperwork, and no particular athletic ambition — two miles, flat enough, at a pace set by whoever is holding the leash. Pets must be well behaved and on leashes. Anyone with questions can call 881-4421.
For the hospital, the morning doubles as a recruiting opportunity. Its therapy animal program depends on volunteers, and the walk puts handlers and their animals in front of the community in the least clinical setting imaginable. Anyone interested in training and registering a pet as a therapy animal team can learn more through Pet Partners or through the hospital's website, under the volunteer section of its careers pages.
What the event asks of participants is modest: show up, bring an animal if you have one, borrow one if you don't, and walk two miles through a town that has been defined by its relationship with animals for well over a century. The stables at the starting line were built for horses that worked cattle. On Saturday they will serve, briefly, as the backdrop for a walk about the quieter work animals do — the kind that lowers a patient's blood pressure, or simply gets a person out the door.