Exam stress can turn bright days into pretty ruff ones.
So thankfully officials at the University’s Halifax College have come up with an innovative idea that can help students during a paws.
The student association is hoping that the college will become one of the few on campus to open a puppy room to help undergraduates and postgraduates de-stress during weeks 5 to 7.
The idea, which has already been adopted at other British universities including Nottingham Trent, would see a room opening to students with a chance to stroke and play with the pets.
Students have hailed it as the “best thing since the library.” One said: “That sounds awesome!”
The student association’s Sponsorship Officer Rachel Smith, who is appealing for companies to come forward to make the idea happen, said: “We’re really excited at the prospect of having some puppies in Halifax during exams to de-stress students. It looks to be a great success at Nottingham Trent and we hope to have something to announce soon!”
The Vice-President of Welfare Jessica Smith added: “The exam period is a particularly stressful time for many students and that often coincides with an increase in feelings of homesickness.
“The comfort that you can get from physical contact, specifically hugging and playing, with another living thing has been shown to help reduce this type of emotional stress, especially if that animal is a household pet that reminds you of home.”
Can you only visit the puppies if you’re in Halifax?
As if we needed more proof that universities are just overpriced care centres….
Yes, all these years with people disowning Halifax as a good college and now we fight back with puppies.
Their welfare team is definitely on the ball this year, whatever the rest of the college is supposed to be like
Anon if you contact the vice-president of welfare I’m sure she’ll be able to answer that, but most of the stuff they do is open to everyone regardless of college so that’s probably the case this time too
Sure, let’s use some other living beings for our own entertainment (excuse me, stress relief; I thought adults could deal with stress in an adult-like way, but I guess either I was wrong or most of the students are not adults yet..), and then ditch them after the exams. Puppies are not beings without any emotions: they form bonds too, and it’s inhumane (inanimale?) to just play with them for a while and then leave them behind. Grow up and learn to deal with stress in ways which do not make use of other living beings.
@Gytis, the puppies are trained therapy dogs, they are used across the country in schools, hospitals and businesses. They’re not just taking random dogs and forcing them to play with Freshers. I personally love that our welfare team is looking into different techniques to make the exam period slightly easier to cope with.
@Gytis Just like you, puppies will encounter a great many people of the course of their lives, and as is especially true in your case, very few of those encounters will turn into long term lasting bonds. Doesn’t mean that, just like you, they couldn’t also benefit from some short-term TLC. Need a hug?
shut up gytis
go away gytis , no one like u
dogs are for life not just for exams
On a serious note, I resent the idea that the valuable time of trained therapy dogs should be used up by affluent,intelligent and successful higher education students who feel hard done by when their time could clearly be devoted to more needy groups of the population.
Exams are an unpleasant but inevitable part of university life. They are over before you know it and are very rarely as bad as you dreaded they would be. I have yet to meet a student who’s lasting trauma from exams has been bad enough to prevent them from promptly returning to their normal life and forgetting all about them. This is not an indication for therapy.
Want to avoid stress in your exams? Don’t leave your revision to the night before, do some exercise, get a good night’s sleep. Get on with the job.
@halifax student, everyone:
How can a PUPPY be a trained therapy dog?
If it were actual dogs, this would be a different thing, but since they are puppies, they can only be ‘used’ for this purpose as such for 1 to 2 years; what happens to them afterwards?
It is easy to ignore the consequences of this, but we have to ensure this does not lead to excessive ‘puppy breeding’, resulting in more grown-up dogs that people want to adopt, and still ongoing breeding of more puppies.
If we make sure this is done ethically, this is an excellent idea however! :)
prostitutes would work better imo
@also sceptic, I think that the word “puppy” has been used in this article for the image it creates, there are no therapy dog charities that exclusively use puppies, most, if not all, are fully grown trained dogs, so the ones used by Halifax will most likely be the same because they’ll have to get them from an established charity for health and safety/risk assessment reasons. I think “puppies” is just a blanket term used by the media for these sorts of things.
@Gytis, @also sceptic, @Danny Devito and anyone else that has any concerns:
The dogs that we are hoping to work with come from a local Guide Dog charity. Human interaction is an essential stage in the training of these puppies so that they can learn to socialise well with a variety of different people and further their training to become working guide dogs. As much as we hope that the environment will be a comfortable, neutral place for students to relax and de-stress, there will also be trainers in the room with the dogs to make sure that it is a comfortable environment for them and the welfare of the puppies will always be incredibly important.The idea is still being finalised and we are in constant communication with the charity, but please be aware that when it (hopefully) goes ahead, we will make sure that it is safe and ethical for all involved, particularly the animals.
If you do have any further questions or concerns feel free to email me on [email protected] :)
Further to Jess’s comments, I think it is worth clarifying a few things.
The idea of organising an exams-time revision break event centred on dogs within Halifax has been first proposed by our College Tutor, Danielle Maxwell, with Rachel Smith leading on the organisation efforts in the past couple of weeks. Initially, Danielle worked with some charities that provide specially trained ‘therapy dogs’ to variety of settings (hospitals, retirement homes, schools and Universities). Danielle and Rachel have also explored different partners; some participate in these events with guide dogs puppies (for whom, we understand, large group socialisation are essential element of training) some with mixed age guide dogs. So there are different concepts that are being investigated.
This work is still very much in progress and the College and HCSA will announce the plans once those are finalised.
All of the proposals include highly-reputable charities that take welfare of animals very seriously (as, of course, do we).
All of the proposals are mutually beneficial: Charities gain exposure to student population (many members of our team weren’t aware of the concept of ‘therapy dogs’ before Danielle explained it to us) along with training animals. Our student organisers gain invaluable skills in negotiating a partnership and putting together quite a complex activity. Our student population at large gets exposure to the diversity of the ‘third sector’, have a chance to talk to and network with charity staff and volunteers (not to forget a fun and slightly different break to motivate great efforts they put into preparation for exams & open assessments).
Neither the College nor HCSA make any claims about the therapeutic/clinical value of those events. They are purely revision breaks with just a bit of difference. The College, Student Association and, I am sure, all stakeholders in the University would advice anyone facing excessive stress, anxiety or – more broadly – any serious emotional and mental health challenges to seek support from Open Door Team (https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/health/). It is also a good time to draw everyone’s attention to Mindful Relaxation Workshops that will be run by ODT on drop-in basis every Tuesday and Thursday between 20th May and 12th June (V/123 in Vanbrugh Nucleus, 12:15 – 12:45). As always if you feel you would benefit from some support, but don’t know how to seek it – talk to a member of your college team (College Tutors, Provost/College Officer, etc) or to the Student Support Hub and we will do our best to put you at ease and point in the right direction.
Overall, this is just one of the many ideas that Halifax College Tutors, Students Association and staff are working on to lift the spirits of our students in the exams period. We will announce our plans when we feel that they are sufficiently mature.
Good luck in your finals everyone!
Exams can be a hugely stressful time. Whilst students are by no means particularly hard done by in most cases, eating healthily, cooking, cleaning, buying food, exercising, revising from 8am -10pm for challenging and important exams whilst staying emotionally positive is not easy. I would challenge anyone who hasn’t been a student at a respected university to state that people should simply ‘grow up’ – this is ignorant and largely unfounded. This seems like an excellent way to reduce high stress levels which can impair health, sleeping and exam performance. Studies have shown that interaction with a pet can reduce stress levels and lead to a more healthy life all round. As long as it’s done ethically for both the animals and people, this seems like a spectacular idea.
Oleg has spoken, you must listen!!
I couldn’t care less about what kind of dog is being used, what bothers me is that this is the kind of nonsense Provosts/Principals spend their time getting involved in. This is the kind of rubbish colleges are spending their money on. The colleges had a massive (yet not very widely reported) shake up last year with huge sums pumped into staffing in some (pilot) colleges. What has that increased funding returned? Full-time College Officers with not enough to keep the occupied.
In response to Ian: As a tutor in one of the pilot colleges (which Vision did a good story on by the way in terms of publicity) I can promise you that our College Officer is very busy all of the time and frequently has to work beyond the normal 9-5 day, especially as students and their problems are not really a 9-5 thing. Yes Oleg chosen to respond to the criticisms raised here (and neither Halifax or Alcuin is a pilot college by the by) but that doesn’t automatically mean he has nothing to do all day.
I hate dogs… upvotes for cat sanctuary?
Lots of people have cat Alergies to cats
If you don’t have the concrete proof that this is gonna happen you shouldn’t be writing about it. Just phoned Halifax regarding the situation and they have told me that they have not confirmed anything regarding a puppy sanctuary. Thanks for ruining the one thing that would have got me through these exams.
This is actually happening now! They announced it the other day!
Yes, it’s really happening! Please spread the word :)
https://www.facebook.com/events/296625537179225/