访谈录 2010-12-22&12-24 “心理治疗”狗帮助大学生

Right.

Now you've only been there this one semester so this is your first experience with students undergoing the pressure of finals, right?

I mean I was an undergraduate for four years in NYU and I went through finals for 8 terms, 9 counting this one. NYU, like Tufts, is a high pressure academic environment. That's why I first started this program.

And when you were at NYU, what was your first exposure to the dogs, being brought and helped relieve the pressure of finals?

It was in those of my sophomore 1 or junior year and our building did a stress day. They had just an hour a week you could have puppy and it was so simple and easy and unique to put on and it drew a lot of attention. It worked truly well. So when I was hired here, I really wanna to expand the program, do it on a much larger scale.

How did it work, you brought in one dog, two dogs, a hundred dogs, a thousand dogs, what was ,what was the process?

The way it actually works is we worked with a therapy dog organization called Dog-Bones.  So what we do is actually in October, you know, at the height of mid-terms of task. We had both 60 dogs at a time coming in, a total maybe 12-16 people over 2-day-period.

And the students were doing what, just pat the dogs, just sort of hang out with dogs?

Yeah, it’s kind of funny, some students like to pat the dogs and stay right up on and especially ones that have dogs at their home or dog people, and someone just sit on the peripheries 2 and talk with each other and take pictures and do whatever they want to do, but even of those people that aren't really patting the dogs or rid up in front of the center, are still having the fun. It's still part of really fun environment.

And you believe that it is effective in reducing the stress and strain of finals or just life?

I absolutely believe it is effective for anything. It’s why they do it in hospitals and in elementary schools. In just general, having any kind of break from studying during really stressful periods like mid-terms and finals where you can sometimes find yourself for 2 or 3 days at a time walk into one task. Taking a half hour out of that, walking around, coming downstairs, completely changing your mindset into something different is really effective in combating some of that stress.

You happened to have any dogs on hand perchance right now?

We do, you want to shift it over?

Yeah, let's have a look. And who do we have here, Carrie?

Hi, this is, er, the one right in front of me, the brown and white one, his name's Sally and he is 5 year old. And then the one to my left is Stella and she is 2 years old.

And they didn't mind being man handled or person handled by all these different students?

They were really really good. They were very good and they loved their bellies 3 rubbed and they loved getting treats from the kids.

Ok, so maybe we can persuade Congress to allow some dogs on the Florida House, or the Senate and settle those people down.

Thank you very much and appreciate your time.

Thank you so much.