Horizons Fall 2016

9 NSU HORIZONS NSU’s Office of Wellness and Recreation and the Canine Assisted Therapy organization bring certified therapy dogs—Baxter, Della, Fayth, and Brady—to NSU’s Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus for outdoor events. The dogs are also on campus during exam weeks to help students relax. Today, more than 400 institutions of higher education have some type of pet therapy program, Adamle said, add- ing that almost 100,000 students have attended pet-therapy sessions at Kent State’s main and regional campuses. Even the Olympic trials had dogs on-site. To help ease anxiety, USA Swimming partnered with the nonprofit Domesti-PUPS to provide about 30 canines for the athletes’ lounge during the eight-day meet held last summer in Nebraska. The trials had more than 1,700 swimmers, most of whom did not qualify for the Olympics. “I’m an animal lover myself, and I was trying to think of different ways in the athlete lounge that they [the swimmers] would calm down and . . . just relax,” said Morgan Weinberg, the program and services manager for USA Swimming in an interview with the USA Today newspaper. Canine Assisted Therapy (CAT), a nonprofit organization based in Oakland Park, Florida, brings certified therapy dogs to NSU’s Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus for out- door events and during exam weeks to help students relax. “There’s no question that the unconditional love from dogs, and their overall happy mood will brighten anyone’s day,” said Michael Birch, assistant director of intramurals and special events at NSU’s Office of Wellness and Recreation. “This is why we like to give the students time to spend with the dogs during the most stressful weeks of the academic year,’’ Birch said. “It allows them to take a break from their studies and exams and go back feeling refreshed and with a smile on their face.” Shelley Green, Ph.D., professor at NSU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, brings the therapy dogs to campus to interact with students in her Equine Assisted Family Therapy class. “Dogs offer companionship, stress reduction, comfort, and service,” Green said. “Our classes introduce students to the field of equine- assisted therapies, and we also cover the larger field of animal-assisted therapies, including canine-assisted therapies,’’ the professor added. “We bring the dogs in each semester in order for the students to understand the specific benefits of the canine-human bond, and to learn more about the different contexts in which dogs are being used to enhance people’s lives.” Continued on next page