Tales to Tails Therapy Dogs Visit Silverline School

On Friday 14th February 4 Tales to Tails volunteer trainers and their therapy dogs visited Silverline School, Limassol, to extend the dogs’ training as therapy dogs and, at the same time, re-capping on the Be a Tree Program (safety around dogs)  delivered to the school last year.

The children were excellent,  they behaved beautifully towards us and treated the dogs with respect and most of them remembered how to greet the dogs and how to be quiet and calm around them. The Be a Tree program had not been forgotten by these young people!  They also asked some very sensible and interesting questions and we could have stayed longer to talk to them but we had disrupted their classes enough.  We were only supposed to be with a couple of classes but word travelled fast and the other classes all wanted to come and see the dogs!

The Tales to Tails partnerships were:  Sara and Noah, Julie and Marley, Carole and Sally,  and our newest recruits Teadora and Oscar.  Oscar is a baby at only a year old and has some more work ahead of him, however he behaved like a true gentleman and everyone loved him.  Noar, who was the oldest dog there, and Oscar left just before the last group of children turned up because we did not want them to be overwhelmed by so many children.

Marley and Sally then held court themselves.  They did this very well and a bonus for us all was that a couple of children who had never stroked a dog before stroked some of the Therapy dogs.  This was a huge step for the children and the dogs enjoyed themselves being centre of attention.

I would like to point out that Silverline School are very supportive of Tales to Tails Therapy Dogs and we are about to begin our Animal Antics Pet Club at the school  in April.  We are looking forward to this and hope to increase Animal Antics Pet Club at other schools on the Island in the future. Our thanks go to Kevin Mace, Principal,   and Nicola Mace, Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator, for their support and encouragement of CyDRA’s (Cyprus Dogs Re-homing Association)  education program.

Thanks also must go to the students – what brilliant dog trainers they all turned out to be!

 

 

Carole Husein