When Kati Loiselle and her therapy dog, Pippa, walk the halls of Bay City Central High School, students eagerly point her out and stop to greet her.
Pippa, a certified therapy dog, matches each student’s energy – calm for the timid kids, tail-wagging and exuberant for those who call her name with enthusiasm.
Loiselle, a Licensed Master Social Worker, works for the Bay-Arenac ISD at Central High School. Several days a week, she brings along Pippa, a 2-year-old Golden Retriever certified through the
Alliance of Therapy Dogs.
Loiselle and Pippa work out of a first-floor classroom, not far from the main office. The room is filled with couches, bean bag chairs, posters, dog treats, and dog toys as well as traditional school furniture.
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Ben Tierney/Bay City Public SchoolsLoiselle walks Pippa through the halls as she greets students and staff. Just like the teenagers she clearly loves, Pippa walks through the school’s halls greeting students and staff. She attends pep rallies, listens as the band performs, and happily runs over to say hi when a friend unexpectedly opens the door to her classroom.
At first glance, it looks like it’s all fun and games. But Pippa’s purpose in the school goes much deeper.
Along with Loiselle, Pippa offers emotional support to students and staff. She helps with behavior intervention, promotes social skills, and generally enhances the school climate.
“I think that ideally if there was (a therapy dog) on every floor here, it would be amazing,” Loiselle says. “There is a very visible benefit to her being here. There are just so many ways she helps me here. I tell people she actually does my job better than I do.”
This year marks the fourth that Loiselle has worked at Central. It’s the beginning of Pippa’s third year.
Through those years, Pippa has proven helpful in a range of situations.
“There’s a couple of kids who if they’re having a meltdown and she’s here, they walk them over here. They just say ‘Pippa!’ And it just totally turns their day around,” Loiselle says.
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Ben Tierney/Bay City Public SchoolsMost students enthusiastically greet Pippa. She's trained to be calm as people pet her. Loiselle also asks Pippa to sit if she notices a student is uncomfortable near her.“She’s really good at comforting kids when they’re upset or crying or just need to feel special.”
Pippa helps kids struggling with social skills. The kids often can talk to Pippa, about Pippa, or about their own pets. It teaches them conversational skills, Loiselle says.
She opens the door for kids to understand and name their emotions.
“She’s really good at mirroring emotions, so I can use that to point things out to kids,” Loiselle says. “You’re angry and we can tell because Pippa is acing weird. Or you’re super excited today, and we can tell because Pippa is super excited.”
She also teaches the kids confidence.
Last year, the students helped Pippa earn an American Kennel Club (AKC) certificate as a
novice trick dog.
“I trained her as a therapy dog and got her through her therapy dog testing,” Loiselle explains. “Any additional fun tricks that she does, the kids have taught her.”
Pippa can ring a bell, weave through a handler’s legs, and other tricks. Teaching her those tricks helped kids build confidence. She even helped one student enter a pageant.
“One of the students here asked if they could use Pippa for their talent,” during a Special Olympics pageant, Loiselle says.
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Ben Tierney/Bay City Public SchoolsLoiselle's office is filled with cozy spaces for Pippa and students alike.“We practiced and we did all her tricks and she went in the pageant. When she got on the stage, she was like, ‘Oh, what is this?’ " and didn’t perform any of her tricks. “It was pretty entertaining. The student thought it was hilarious.”
While that moment was fun, the
field of therapy dogs is serious business and growing. Loiselle says universities are beginning to offer certificates in animal-assisted therapy.
As the field grows, it's important to understand what therapy dogs and what they are not. To encourage people to learn what distinguishes therapy, service, and emotional-support animals, Loiselle offers a one-page guide,
Therapy dogs, such as Pippa, are trained to provide psychological or physiological therapy to individuals other than their handlers. They typically visit schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities. They must meet set standards and are not protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Therapy dogs must be invited into facilities.
Service dogs, on the other hand, do have ADA protection. They provide help for their handlers. Public spaces must allow service dogs.
Emotional-support animals have no ADA rights. While they may be trained, they are not trained for specific tasks to help a person with a disability. They do not have unlimited access to public spaces.
Pippa’s personality and training help her complement the services Loiselle offers, both for the students in the social worker’s formal caseload and the general student population. Even school staff stop to visit Pippa when they need a pick-me-up or a break.
“She basically makes everyone feel like they’re the best and her most favorite person in the world,” Loiselle says.
This is Loiselle’s second therapy dog. Her older dog, Gus, came to Central for the first few months she worked there. Unfortunately, Gus died later that school year. By the time Gus passed, Loiselle had seen how much a therapy dog could help, so she began looking for a new dog.
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Ben Tierney/Bay City Public SchoolsPippa is certified as a therapy dog. She's trained to be interested in people, but calm, even when the school hallways are crowded with noisy teens.Some of Pippa’s early training took place inside the school, making her comfortable with the environment.
“She loves it here,” Loiselle says. “When we get here in the morning, it’s like the best day ever for her. Every morning. There’s never a bad day for her.”
Zero bad days is a good track record as Pippa enters her junior year in high school.
“The kids that came in as freshmen are saying ‘She’s going to graduate with us.’ That’ll be next year,” Loiselle says with a laugh.
Even years after Pippa “graduates,’ Loiselle expects she’ll still be helping kids, teachers, and staff navigate the highs and lows of high school.
“I don’t think there’s a kid where who doesn’t think they’re her favorite person,” Loiselle says. “It’s the same for staff. There’s a handful of staff members who if they’re having a bad day, they come down to see Pippa. After a few minutes, they go back to work.”