Dogs comfort weary students in Cathedral

Pitt junior Sarah Miller sits on the floor with Maui, a Havanese-Poodle mix. She scratches… Pitt junior Sarah Miller sits on the floor with Maui, a Havanese-Poodle mix. She scratches the dog’s stomach. Maui closes her eyes, content.

“She’s going to fall asleep soon,” Maui’s owner and handler Marsha Robbins says. “Keep doing that.”

Maui comes to the Commons Room of the Cathedral of Learning nearly every Tuesday not only to receive tummy rubs. Maui is a part of Therapy Dogs International, an organization based in New Jersey.

Every Tuesday from 7 to 8 p.m., students in the Commons Room can pet and play with the Therapy Dogs. The dogs, sponsored by the Women’s Multicultural Group, serve as stress relievers for students.

Robbins, a Pitt alumna, teaches classes training the dogs to become Therapy Dogs at the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society.

Robbins came up with the idea to bring the Therapy Dogs to the University when she was working on her master’s degree at Pitt.

“The kids in my classes always looked so tired and depressed. I thought, ‘Well, dogs make me feel happy and better about myself. It might work for others,'” she said.

The group started coming to Pitt two years ago. At first they only came once a month and stood outside the Union.

“We would see about five to six people,” Robbins said. “But students started coming back to see the dogs. It’s really grown on campus since then. Now it’s sometimes around 150 people.”

Therapy Dogs and their handlers now come during most Tuesday evenings in the fall, spring, and summer semesters. They move inside the Cathedral during cold weather.

“Pitt is a good place for newly certified dogs to get their feet wet,” she said. “Students are gentler with the dogs.”

“There’s been research done showing that dogs lower blood pressure, take away stress and make people happy,” Robbins said.

Richard and Lynn Pilarski, the owners of three Pyrenean mastiffs rescued by the Humane Society, learned about the Therapy Dogs program through the humane society.

“We rescue them, we train them, we certify them,” Richard said. “They’re big dogs, but people can see how calm they are.”

“This breed guards cattle, guards children,” he said. “They’re great family pets, and really good at receiving attention,” he added, pointing to his 9-year-old Pyrenean mastiff, Apache.

The dog, surrounded by three students petting his long, white hair, is passive and docile.

“We go to Children’s Hospital, the School for the Blind, Shadyside Hospital, Allegheny Hospital, Mercy Hospital and many elderly care facilities,” he said. “It’s worth it to see the people we visit smile.”

“People respond to the dogs very well. Now people in the hospitals will sign up to have them come to their hospital rooms.”

Pilarski says that the key to training a dog is to socialize it from an early age. “We take them everywhere and put them in every situation.”

According to Pilarski, the dogs go through weeks of training, and then are tested by being put into various situations to see how they will react.

They are taken into crowded rooms where chairs are dropped near them and loud noises are made, among other things. If the dog continues to be calm in these situations then it receives its certification as a Therapy Dog.

Robbins said that the dogs need to be friendly, but passive. They have to know to sit, stand, lay down, come and stay. They also have to be comfortable around every person and dog they come across. The dogs are not allowed to bark, and must be housebroken.

SJ Antonucci, a cross-enrollment student from Chatham University, stopped to pet the dogs. “I have a French class in the Cathedral of Learning every Tuesday night,” she said. “It’s so nice to play with the dogs. It takes away stress.”

“Research shows that dogs decrease stress,” Antonucci said. “It’s healthy to have them around.”

Dr. J. Richard Jennings, a professor at Pitt’s Department of Psychiatry, says that plenty of research has been done to show that pets may be beneficial for reducing stress.

He referred to a 1991 research study from the State University of New York at Buffalo on stress levels in humans in the presence and absence of their dogs.

In this study, a group of 45 female dog owners did arithmetic problems of varying difficulty levels in the presence of their dog and an experimenter, a friend and an experimenter, and just the experimenter.

The results of the study showed that the female subjects had little to no negative reaction to the stress of solving the arithmetic problems in the presence of their dogs and the experimenter.

“This may show that people respond better to stress in the presence of pets,” Jennings said.

Although dogs are not allowed in the Cathedral of Learning, Sarah Miller, the Vice President of the Women’s Multicultural Club at Pitt, convinced the club to sponsor the dogs so they would be allowed in the Cathedral.

“I was walking by one Tuesday night, and stopped to pet the dogs,” Miller said. “Marsha [Robbins] was telling me how they needed a sponsor.”

Students know about the Therapy Dogs mainly through word of mouth, Miller said.

Senior Alissa Pierkarski does not go to the Cathedral on Tuesday nights specifically to see the dogs, but she said they’re a plus.

“I just go up, pet the dogs, and then go back to study,” Pierkarski said. “It’s a stress reliever and makes me happy.”

Senior Shane Hanlon agreed. “I’m a dog person,” he said. “It’s a nice break from studying. But it can be distracting. Sometimes I just look at them and pretend to do work.”

“It’s also fun to watch people’s reactions to seeing the dogs for the first time,” Hanlon said. “They look surprised, like ‘Why are there dogs in here?'”

Tuesday was the Therapy Dogs’ last visit to Pitt before winter break. They will be back with more dogs and handlers on the first Tuesday in February, just in time for spring midterms.