News & Events

Mt. Washington Children's Center

Description: We arrived around 10:15am and met up just outside the Children's Center at 10:20 to introduce ourselves. We did not have a team leader for this deployment. The 3 of us met Beverly at the front door and she let us in to the Children's Center. .Each dog team introduced themselves as well as their dog. Beverly let us know that they have 3 classrooms and it seemed best for each of us to take a different classroom and then we would rotate through. Each class was set up for us and ready when we arrived. All of the children were seated and the teachers had already let them know that the dogs were coming and to be very gentle with them. I went in to the toddler room first and the children were very good and initially shy. Not all wanted to pet Pipsqueak, but they seemed to like having him there. Others were very excited to pet him and they were good with him, but their attention span was very short, so they would pet him and go play and then come back. I met the 2 youngest girls who just lost their mother and one seemed happy to have Pip there and the youngest wasn't so sure. The teachers were very welcoming and also seemed to enjoy being able to interact and pet the dogs. We stayed in this room for about 25 minutes, then rotated in to one of the other classrooms and Duke came in to the toddler room. The next room we went in to was also ready for us with all the children sitting in their assigned spots on the floor in a semi circle. These children were a little older and had lots of questions for Pip and were all very excited to meet him. Pip made his way around to each child and also to the teachers as they seemed to need some comfort from the dogs. We spent about 20 minutes in this room and each of us rotated into the next classroom to meet everyone. The teachers thanked us for the visit, and as we were on our way out, the oldest girl who recently lost her mom came out to pet Pip, and we hung out for a couple of more minutes so she could have some one on one time. The teachers expressed their appreciation for having us come today and we all left some of our dog cards for the kids who wanted them. The visit ended around 11:15am and we all headed out.