Our Dogs Went To University

Sarah was contacted by a lecturer at La Trobe University who examines human-animal relationships. She was looking for someone to help out with a short experiment with a group of third year psychology students. The project was mostly to teach the students about doing research, and a trial was set up at the La Trobe Bundoora campus, where the students needed to have a couple of very friendly and chilled dogs on campus, in the public areas, for an hour or so over lunchtime.

The aim of the research was to see if having dogs on campus makes the student body generally feel less stressed, so while the dogs were there some of the psychology students were handing out short surveys that students in the general vicinity can complete, just saying how stressed they feel.

We jumped at the chance of bringing the dogs to university.  Minnie, Oscar and our new dog, River went along and had a ball being cuddled, hugged, belly tickled, patted, fed and generally adored.  It was a particularly good opportunity for River to practice being in big crowds.  She didn’t disappoint - and loved every moment of it.  Stay tuned for the next newsletter, where we hope to publish some of the results.