At Luther College, I am the adviser to a student group called Animal Allies. The students in the group worked hard all semester to get the college to allow a stress relief day with dogs during finals week. Their hard work paid off and this past Sunday (Dec. 12) Luther hosted its first stress relief day with dogs. We had four dogs there --three of them were ours--Paloma (Australian Shepherd), China (American Staffordshire Terrier), and Jack (Pug) and then Bugs (Border Collie)who used to be our dog, but now belongs to a student of ours who has her working daily as a therapy dog for special needs children at an elementary school in Iowa. All of the dogs were a big hit, but everybody was especially attracted to Jack--he's pretty damn cute--he's a Pug afterall.
Many more students participated than we had expected. With them coming and going over a period of about 1 1/2 hours, we must have had upwards of a 100 people. We plan on doing this every semester, but we are definitely going to need more dogs. All of them were absolutely spent by the time the session was over--in fact, the last 20 mins. or so they kept coming over to me with a look that said "it's time to get me out of here."
Dogs really are amazing critters. Whether its companionship, stress relief, therapy, or service work, they have a remarkable ability to impact our lives in meaningful ways.
Scott
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