A CUDDLE GOES A LONG WAY TO BEAT STRESS
Skyview Academy puts on an event — that includes therapy dogs — to help students cope with school stress.
The next several weeks at Skyview Academy will be daunting — standardized tests, essays and final exams. The workload can be stressful for students.
But when they see a twolegged Chihuahua happily rolling along with the help of a cart, their challenges are put in perspective.
“It makes you wonder if we can do it, too,” said Abi Scafe, an 18-year-old senior. “Can we still be happy if we go through those hard times?”
Scafe, along with fellow Skyview seniors Sarah Knapp, Alex Rivera and Nathan Bujarski, organized Skyview’s inaugural Coping & Overcoming, a destressing event for the school.
They served healthy food; played smooth jazz; invited Colorado Comfort Canines to cuddle with; set up stations for finger-painting and sandcastle building; and provided a trough of Orbeez, those super waterlogged balls that kids like to play with.
Oh, and Bujarski led a game of dodge ball because, well, pegging a classmate with a ball also can be a release.
The students hope the event will become an annual thing for Skyview, and they hope to create a model that other schools can use.
“At the end of April and the beginning of May, it’s a really high-stress time,” Knapp said.
The seniors decided to invite the therapy dogs because, she said, “our whole school is big on dogs.”
Sure enough, when a girl’s soccer game ended Saturday afternoon, the team came inside to cuddle dogs, including Deuce, the two-legged, male Chihuahua. The students also played with the dogs before eating.
Deuce was born without front legs, the victim of an irresponsible breeder, said Ken
Rogers, a board member of Colorado Comfort Canines.
Rogers custom-built a cart, and Deuce rolls along for treats and ear scratches.
“They think they’re normal,” Rogers said. “They get along just fine.”
The therapy dog organization was founded after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, Rogers said. The goal is to provide comfort to people during traumatic events such as violence or natural disasters.
The dogs are certified, and all handlers are trained in critical incident stress management so they can identify when a person needs more help beyond a dog cuddle, he said.
When the high school students asked whether the dogs could come to the destressing event, Rogers loaded up Deuce and his friends and traveled in from Steamboat Springs to help.
“When they asked us to come down, we thought it would be a great fit,” Rogers said. “It’s what we do.”
Saturday’s destressing event ended at 5 p.m., and, for all their efforts to help other students relax, the organizers said they would wind down when it was over.
“It’s so ironic. We were planning a destress event, and we were stressed about it,” Rivera said.