Monday, May 12, 2025
As students at South Side High School begin reviewing for Regents exams and finals, they have support from a beloved wellness initiative, Therapy Dog Thursdays, with Bob, a calm and cuddly black Labrador retriever, and Tory, a lively shih tzu.
South Side’s therapy dog program, now in its fourth year, was created in the aftermath of a series of student suicides in 2019. The school district first brought in dogs from Long Island Therapy Dogs to help students cope with grief and trauma, but then decided to keep therapy dogs of its own on hand.
That decision led to the acquisition of Bob, who had once been on a very different path.
Noreen Leahy, a former assistant superintendent of the Rockville Centre school district, fostered Bob in 2017 as part of the Guide Dog Foundation. Bob was raised with the intention of becoming a guide dog for the visually impaired — a rigorous process requiring months of training and assessment.
“He was there for two months, and at the end they released him for lack of enthusiasm,” Leahy said, “but that said, Bob is pretty quiet and kind of a passive dog, and so I knew he had some kind of life of service in him.”
Despite flunking out of his original career training, Bob’s extensive work with humans and gentle demeanor made him the ideal candidate for South Side’s first full-time therapy dog.
Leahy and Josie Bishop, a school psychologist at South Side, both completed certification through the American Kennel Association’s Canine Good Citizen program, and underwent handler training to bring Bob into the school setting. Bob passed his six-week course at Petco “like nobody’s business,” Bishop said, noting that the training involved exposing dogs to noisy, distracting environments full of people, pets and treats to test their focus and resilience.
Bob now visits South Side every other Thursday, alternating weeks with Tory, a 10-pound shih tzu who was trained as part of a Girl Scout project. Both dogs are adored by students and staff alike.
“You’ll hear the kids say, ‘Bob, I have tests, I’m going to rub you for good luck,’” Bishop said. “He’s just so compliant. He just lays there and gets pets and wags his tail, and he’s just happy to have all this attention.”
Students encounter the dogs primarily in the ninth-grade wing, where Bishop’s office is. Bob is tethered to a 25-foot lead, giving him room to greet students while remaining safe and controlled. Signs posted outside the building, and outside Bishop’s door, alert students and staff to the dog’s presence, a precaution for those with allergies or a fear of dogs.
Both dogs are especially popular with students in South Side’s CORE and Pathways programs, for students with developmental disabilities or learning challenges. But their reach extends far beyond special education.
“I work with a lot of the students who have IEPs, but this gives me an opportunity to get to know students who are just walking by my office,” Bishop said, referring to individualized education programs.
The program, once a pioneering concept, has now become a model for others and an “essential component” of South Side, Leahy said.
“Josie was actually ahead of her time when she approached me to bring Bob in as a therapy dog,” Leahy said. “Now I hear about it in many different districts, and I see them in many different districts, and I think we realize that everybody went through this very difficult, traumatic time with the pandemic. Even prior to the pandemic, there was a rise in incidents of students with mental health issues. Whatever the reasons may be — social media, cellphones, pressure, substance abuse, whatever the reasons were — we saw this uptick in the need for mental health services.
“We really wanted to do everything in our power to find interventions that would help students to get through the day and get beyond whatever their frustrations or their anxieties were, and so it just made a lot of sense to me,” she added.
