Therapy dog, Monet the Poodle, helping students out by allowing them to pet her to de-stress from school. Photo by Elise Tranby Elise Tran, Staff Writer
Two therapy dogs were brought onto campus through the organization Alliance of Therapy Dogs (ATD) during lunch on May 3 and one therapy dog on May 9. The purpose of the dogs were to relieve stress from students during Advanced Placement (AP) testing.
What started as an English senior project to make a difference in the community, Project PAWSE created by Elaine Hoang (‘17), Stephen Nunes (‘17), Jonathan Nguyen (‘17) and Casey Khaolaeiad (‘17), attracted large crowds of students.
“I believe as students, we are way too stressed about school and other things in life and I just felt that having the dogs here would help eliminate stress during AP [exams],” said Hoang.
Overall, there were positive reactions coming from the students.
“So, basically bringing dogs over to school was a great experience, because usually for school you feel drained just because all the classes and the AP exams coming soon,” said Cindy Nguyen (‘19). “So with seeing dogs of course you can help feel like happy seeing them.”
The idea emerged when Hoang scrolled down Twitter a couple of months ago and noticed many other high schools brought in therapy dogs to help students.
They contacted the organization and it took a lot of trial and error including set up dates and forms to fill out, according to Hoang.
Originally, the therapy dogs were supposed to come on May 2, but due to liability issues, the event had to be postponed.
ATD is a non-profit organization, so the seniors did not have to pay a penny. However, they are trying to raise funds as a donation to ATD, but have yet to generate any donations.
The therapy dogs that attended on May 3 was Henry, a four year old Golden Retriever, and Stryker, an eight year old Labrador Husky mix. Monet, a three year old Poodle, came on May 9.
“Just dogs here makes us really happy and usually like us like friends like we’re just like always like ranting about school and then like when we heard about dogs coming we were like so excited to pet the dogs,” said C. Nguyen.
