Aren't Those Therapy Dogs??

One of my last duties Friday afternoon deserves its own post - both because of how stupid I felt and absolutely mortified I was when I finally figured out what I was doing. Around 5th period, the VP was with two ladies, each with a beautiful black labrador. They were precious dogs, very playful and friendly in the office. The VP asked if I could escort one of the dogs to various classrooms for their duty. I thought how absolutely wonderful this all was - because I'm thinking THERAPY dogs that I get to take to various classes - "randomly" - to help the children connect with animals, deal with anger issues, and gain a plethora of other positive benefits from their "interaction" with the dogs.

So we leave the office and I say, "Wow, I'm jealous we didn't have this when I was in school!" The lady kind of looks at me funny and says, "Well, that's probably because we trusted kids back then." I wish I could say her comment triggered the "aha moment" in me - but still, no. I thought her reply a bit odd, but still didn't realize what we were about to do. She told me to pick a classroom randomly. I picked, we went in. The teacher knew what was now happening and it slowly started to occur to me as well - we asked the children to leave everything at their desks, to take nothing with them and to file outside. Then, the dog started its job - sniffing every bag and every item left behind for any contraband.

Now, I must admit the lady and her dog were quite nice and were only doing their job. We did chat it up as the dog sniffed and I learned quite a bit about the program. At one point she told me there are some teachers who are quite rude to her in front of the kids, while others just tolerate the program and still others fully endorse it. I told her I absolutely would not condone a teacher being rude in front of the kids, but I myself would definitely fall into the "roughly tolerate" category. To be perfectly honest, I would not even imagine such a program would be necessary - it would not even cross my mind that kids would ever be subjected to this! My naivete about these sorts of issues continues to be eroded and chipped away.

Luckily, we caught no kids with any drugs and went back to the office without incident. The other admins got quite a kick out of my misinterpretation of what I was being sent to do. I still can't help but wonder, however, whether our money and efforts would be better served with therapy dogs instead of drug-sniffing ones.