News & Events

Mountain View High School - Student Death

Description: Teams were requested to Mountain View High School to help their councilors with students. Over the weekend 11-23-19, one of their 16 year old students took his own life. Teachers and students were told at 9:30 am... the request for our teams came at 10:30 am. We had two teams on site by 11 am. Sheryl and Maxx and Sharon and Abby covered Day 1. They worked with the councilors and the close friends of the deceased student for the first half of the day. The teams sat in separate counselors offices with students who loved and petted the dogs while pouring out their feelings of loss to a counselor. At lunch we were encouraged to either go to the library to help other students or out in the compound. We tried the compound...but as this is a large high school with 3500+ students and one lunch hour, we were quickly surrounded. Sheryl and Sharon then decided it would be a better experience if we went to the library and visited with smaller groups of students. Staff was also on duty in the library and not out in the compound and this gave more control to the visits with the dogs. Sheryl and Maxx left at 1:30 pm. Sharon and Abby were pulled into another councilors office to help with a young man that was quiet upset. Sharon and Abby left at 2:30 pm. Estimates for engagements this first day to be about 100. The POC called and asked for teams to come back Day 2. She shared how much our teams had helped both students and staff and how amazed she was of how trained our dogs were. Day two we had more teams available so we split the day morning: Sharon/Abby, Clare/Chica before lunch with Sheryl/Maxx, Tracy/Evelyn after lunch until the end of the school day. Day two for the morning teams was quiet. Clare/Chica and Sharon/Abby were assigned the library to visit with students. The councilors were to send in students needing help. This was 10-12:15 pm. We had one special needs class come visit with the dogs. They didn't know the deceased but they loved dogs. We had a few friends of the boy stop in and visit. But it was pretty quite all morning. At noon we walked back to councilors offices and had more engagements with staff and some students in the office for the lunch hour. Total engagements for morning teams estimated to be about 35. The afternoon was spent with Sheryl/Maxx and Tracy/Evelyn going to two special needs classrooms and working one on one with students in the counselors offices and ending the day with visits in the library. Their estimate for afternoon engagements was about 100.