Audrey Roberts works with a therapy dog during a training session. Greenfield-Central schools are working with four puppies to eventually be used as therapy dogs within the schools. Wednesday, July 3, 2024.
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — Tongues flopping, tails wagging, the puppies were pouncing about trying to figure out why their owners were barking out words like “sit” and “heel” as they pranced the furballs about the room during a training session.
Officials with Greenfield-Central Community Schools are in the process of growing their therapy dog program as a way to connect more with students. The district already has two older therapy dogs, Ky and Kaden, currently in their schools and soon will have four new puppies — Aggie, Douglas, Frank and Sully.
The four pups are spending their time in summer school, learning the ropes of how to be a good therapy dog at Custom Canine, 4945 East U.S. 40, Greenfield. The decision to add more dogs to the district comes after several people associated with the school district stepped up to pay for the dogs and their training and offered to be caregivers for the therapy dogs.
Most of the puppies, Aggie, Douglas (Douggie) and Frank are mini-aussiedoodles and one, Sully, is either a lab or perhaps boxer mix. Officials say they aren’t quite sure.
Dawn Hanson is the Director of Health Services for Greenfield-Central schools and has taken on Aggie, a female mini-aussiedoodle, to train and care for. Hanson will then bring the dog into her office and whichever school she is needed once Aggie is officially trained.
“Aggie is just four months old right now,” Hanson said. “I’ve been bringing her to school to help her get used to things, and I can tell you dogs make a huge difference with kids. We’ve seen the difference both Ky and Kaden have already made with the kids and the staff, too.”
The mini-aussiedoodle pups come from a litter owned by Chris Sullivan, a nurse in the district who introduced her dogs Ky and Kaden as therapy dogs to the district two years ago. Sullivan decided the new litter of puppies should also be used to work with kids in the community, just like Ky and Kaden, and district officials were thrilled.
“Our principal at the time, Jason Cary, helped us get the school policy changed a couple of years ago so we could have therapy dogs,” Hanson said. “Then Chris decided to breed a litter of puppies and have school people be their caregivers, so here we are.”
Sullivan, who works mostly with special education students in the district, said she and others are on a little bit of a mission, something they felt was right in their hearts to do — bring the dogs into the school atmosphere.
“All of the people who are here training a puppy now have been blessed by Ky and Kaden in some way so they know and want to be part of what we’re trying to do with getting more dogs into the schools,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan noted her family does not raise puppies, but when she and others saw how great Ky and Kaden were with the kids, her family decided to have a special litter.
“It costs about $30,000 to get and train a good therapy dog, and that’s not affordable for anybody, let alone educators,” Sullivan said. “So our mission was for us to have this litter and make the puppies affordable to the people who wanted them and offer the training at an affordable rate.”
The pups are going through official training once a week, but the handlers are given instructions on how to train the dogs while the puppies are growing in their new homes or in group play dates.
“We always start training with your dog sitting to your left,” Kristie Upton of Custom Canine told the group during a recent training session.
Upton has been training service and therapy dogs for the past seven years and is now tasked with training the pups for Greenfield-Central schools.
“We specialize in companion dog training,” Upton said. “In order to be a service dog, the pups must earn their ‘Canine Good Citizen’ title, and we offer that plus the therapy part because we’re able to evaluate that when we test their obedience because I am also an evaluator.”
While Upton noted every dog is different, with some dogs taking months to train and others taking several years, she loves seeing the end results.
“We love seeing the dogs have better lives, going into schools, changing people’s lives,” Upton said. “We’ll work with them until we are certain they are official therapy dogs.”
Caitlin Gordon, the 2024 district teacher of the year, who teaches math at Greenfield Intermediate School, said having a sweet dog like Sully, who is now her’s, be able to come into the school will mean so much to the children.
“Anytime you can have a dog with children, it’s special,” Gordon said. “They really can help a student calm down. I’ve seen that comfort.”
Despite not knowing what kind of dog Sully actually is, Gordon feels he’s going to be great with the kids because he’s already so calm and in control, even as a puppy.
“He’s very much attentive to the kids in our own house, so I know he’s going to do well in school,” Gordon said.
The group noted two of the pups who were at the recent training are also being trained to work at Eskenazi Hospital, but all the pups will be working to make lives better for kids and adults.
“We’re just happy these educators have stepped up and can have these amazing puppies and didn’t have to sell the farm to get them,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan, who owns the mom of the aussiedoodle pups, had another one of her aussiedoodle puppies, Logan, involved in the recent training session. However, she noted Logan isn’t currently part of the group of four puppies who will be coming into the district schools. However, she said one never knows what he’ll be doing in the future.
“We had a tragedy, losing a child in our district at the end of last year. We took Ky and Kaden into school all that week, and I can’t tell you how much of a difference it made with the children,” Sullivan said. “I honestly don’t know what those kids would have done without the dogs.”
Sullivan noted the aussiedoodles are non-shedding and as hypoallergenic as a dog can be.
