MOUNT VERNON – Mount Vernon City Schools added another staff member in 2022 in an attempt to meet the emotional and psychological needs of students.
There’s just one catch: This staff member has four legs and is about 4.5 months old — a therapy dog named Nova.
Nova, who joined the district in January, is handled by and lives with Mount Vernon school resource officer Jeremiah Armstrong. While Nova works in the district, she is owned by the Mount Vernon Police Department. She is the department’s first therapy dog.
Therapy dogs are trained to provide comfort and support. They are not service dogs, where the work of a dog is related to its handler’s disability. Therapy dogs do not have the same legal rights to access in public spaces as service dogs under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
There have been reports of a COVID-19 pandemic-related decline in child and adolescent mental health, which the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association declared a national emergency.
So far, Armstrong said he has seen the dog’s presence have a positive effect on student and staff well-being on a variety of occasions.
When a student is being defiant, for example, school counselors and administration have called Armstrong to bring Nova to sit in on conversations.
Before the district had the therapy dog, administration would typically call a student’s parent and have the student removed from school if behavior did not improve.
Now, after spending time with Nova, students are often back in class within 20 minutes.
“We’re seeing stuff like that almost on a daily basis,” Armstrong said.
Nova, a bernedoodle, is also hypoallergenic — ¾ bernese mountain dog and ¼ standard poodle, Armstrong said. A breeder based in Howard, Beth Kane, donated the dog to the sheriff’s office for use in the schools. Students chose Nova’s name through a middle school competition in January.
Nova will begin the official therapy dog certification process next school year. Until then, Armstrong said his main focus is working on her basic obedience.
“When she is 1-year-old, she will be a certified therapy dog, so this fall she’ll go through the training and then in the winter time she’ll actually be certified,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong had not been a therapy dog handler prior to Nova, so he is also undergoing training simultaneously. Armstrong and Mount Vernon’s police department are working with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Dog Therapy Program for training.
Franklin’s sheriff’s office established its program in 2017, with Mattis K. Nine, the first law enforcement therapy dog in Ohio and the sixth in the country.
Franklin Sgt. Jason Ratcliff said he started seeing more widespread use of therapy dogs by sheriff’s departments starting in 2015, but it is a relatively new concept that is, as of now, not regulated by law.
“Essentially, there are no state standards for law enforcement therapy dogs,” Ratcliff said. “There is no legislation that defines what a therapy dog is.”
While there are no legal standards, Franklin’s program recommends therapy dogs meet both socialization and obedience benchmarks.
For socialization, Franklin’s program has dogs meet the Alliance of Therapy Dogs test.
For obedience, the program recommends dogs maintain the American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen certification and Urban Canine Good Citizen certification, which indicates dogs are well-behaved in public settings.
Franklin’s program is five days and involves distraction training and evaluations throughout the week. Dogs will be taken to public places, such as malls, the Columbus Zoo and courthouses, to get acclimated to new environments and sounds, Ratcliff said.
Ratcliff recommends ongoing training beyond the five-day program, but, again, there are no legal requirements.
For therapy dog evaluations, Ratcliff said it is industry standard for dogs to be at least 1-year-old and have at least a 6-month relationship with its handler.
Ratcliff knows of only one other sheriff’s office dog therapy training program in the country, located in Brevard County, Florida.
The Florida program, Paws & Stripes started in 2006, is different from Franklin’s in that it partners with its local animal shelter to help gets dogs adopted as trained therapy animals.
The evidence of the therapy dog’s effectiveness at comforting students at Mount Vernon schools is anecdotal thus far. Ratcliff said the efficacy of therapy dog use after undergoing Franklin’s program is also narrative.
But with five years of the therapy dog program underway, and a 23-year law enforcement background, Ratcliff has no doubt therapy dog use by his department is worthwhile.
“If you look from purely business perspective, I’ve never seen anything that provides a better return of investment,” he said, referring to expenses versus benefit potential.
Regarding the specific use of therapy dogs in schools, Mount Vernon is not alone.
Other school districts in Ohio have brought therapy dogs on staff in recent years as well, many specifically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, (examples include: Lakota Local Schools, Mason City Schools, Bryan City Schools, and greater Cincinnati schools, among others.)
Dogs have also been used to provide support in settings outside of school buildings, such as in courtrooms and hospitals.
Studies have found dogs can provide a therapeutic benefit — specifically by reducing physiological symptoms of stress and reducing negative behaviors such as aggression —but caution that dogs alone are not the cure all to psychological stresses.
Nova’s main role is to comfort students, Armstrong said. He said he has been pleasantly surprised that Nova’s presence also seems to comfort staff, who he said have been eager to kneel in the hallways and pet her.
The introduction of a therapy dog in the district has not been without concern.
During the district’s March board meeting, a resident questioned the implications of having a police officer handle the therapy dog, specifically making students comfortable with and potentially implicating themselves to law enforcement.
School board members and the resident also raised concerns about distinguishing Nova’s role as a therapy dog from that of a police dog, specifically to avoid students mistakenly approaching police dogs outside of the school setting.
“She’s not our typical apprehension or drug dog,” Armstrong said Monday.
A police dog is trained to attack and sniff out drugs. Those dogs should not be approached and students should not pet them, Armstrong said.
Supt. Bill Seder said the district would consider ways to make the distinction between working police dogs and therapy dogs more clear to students, but did not outline specific plans Monday.
In follow-up interviews, Seder and middle school principal Darin Prince said the district has informed students and parents about the therapy dog so far through parent updates and episodes of The Buzz, a newscast middle school students watch during their flex period.
Nova and Armstrong attended the March board meeting as part of the middle school building report, but Nova is used across buildings, Prince said.
Armstrong and Nova were featured on a recent Buzz newscast for students, during which Armstrong explained what to do and not to do with a dog now in the building.
“People automatically want to come up and touch her, which for her that is fine but don’t get in the habit of that,” Armstrong said in the video. “If you are around a dog you do not know, always ask the person in charge of that dog if you can pet it and you go up slowly to the dog, calmly to the dog.”
Armstrong also said students and staff should be cognizant to pick up litter, so Nova does not eat anything that will make her sick.
In response to concerns at the board meeting, Seder and Prince said the district will work to find ways to make the distinction clearer between therapy dogs and police dogs used for drug searches and apprehension.
