We have spent the past few weeks introducing Coco, our Wellbeing Dog, to our community virtually. Coco has been onsite to work with our Year 6 team in filming some educational videos for students, staff and families on how to interact with our school Wellbeing Dog (which is slightly different to how you treat your own dog at home).

The students eagerly wait for any updates on Coco each day. Students and staff will spend the remainder of the term engaging in short educational videos, discussions and setting up the three expectations for when Coco is with us regularly next term.

The three expectations that we ask all in our community to abide by are: 

• greeting the human first before engaging with Coco
• giving lots of space when Coco is moving between spaces
• not standing in groups and staring at her (or calling her name), but keeping moving.

These expectations are strategies to help Coco feel relaxed and settled at school.

Students have also been introduced to the expectations around their behaviour when Coco is in a classroom. This will be reinforced by staff before Coco joins us on campus next term.

Over the holidays we will be filming further educational videos for students, focusing on reading dogs' body language and engaging with Coco in respectful and empathic ways.

We are very grateful to the staff who are doing extra training outside of their teaching hours to enable this student-led initiative to occur.

As of Term 3 we ask that all parents and caregivers not bring your own personal dogs onsite during the hours of 8am – 4pm. This is to ensure that while Coco is onsite, she is in “work” mode. Parents and caregivers will of course still be allowed to bring their dogs to drop off/pick up, but we ask you to remain outside of the school boundaries when dropping off or picking up your students. Thank you for your support.

Caitlin Wilk
German Teacher and Dogs Connect Coordinator