 Hi, everybody. I'm Jan Zuha. I'm a humanities and outreach librarian here at MSU, the MSU Library. And I am really pleased to have you join us here. We are always interested here at the Library in stress relief. We watch students have a lot of stress at certain times in the semester, and we try to give you programs that will help you be stressed. And our pause to distress program is one of those. It's very important that you practice self-care during the semester to make sure that you can do your very best work. So that's why we do things like libraries pause to distress events. And in fact, I have one of our major helpers with pause to distress here with me today. This is Nancy Rosen. Nancy, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Sure. I have been with email therapy animals since 1998. So that would be 22 years now, I believe. And I'm the Boseman coordinator of Intermountain Therapy Animals, henceforth, ITA. And basically, I brought it to Boseman from Salt Lake City. And so thank you. It's been my pleasure. It's been basically my who I am and what I do. This is my partner, Lily. She's actually my fourth therapy dog. She's five now and loves and loves and loves to meet people. What kind of dog is she? Lily is a poodle. She is a standard poodle. And she was just made pretty for this event. She was. She was just groomed on Friday. And of course, I had to touch up the poof before we came. And do you find that your dogs are really helpful with stress relief? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I live near here and I'm on campus all the time. And not during the official pause to distress, lots and lots of students will want to pet the dogs and talk about their dogs that they have at home. And so, yeah, it's made a huge difference. And how many years now have we been doing a lot of stress? Seven or eight years, something like that. Yeah. So it's been a long time. And I know it's grown in popularity. You know, it was a real risk for us because typically libraries don't have in the past, try not wanted any animals in the building, you know, for reasons mostly of cleanliness, keeping resources fresh, and that sort of thing. But, you know, also safety. And we're really happy to have the specially trained therapy dogs because they're always very well behaved. And their owners are always keeping them very clean and making sure that there's no mats in the library. So that's incredibly helpful. And so we have hundreds of students who come by. And we've typically done pause to distress at the end of each semester when some of the stress is the highest with all the exams. But also we're doing it now at different times throughout the semester, you know, when we sense that there's a need. And we always get hundreds of students. And if we don't have enough dogs, there's a problem because students pile up like three deep in order to get near the dog, even if they can't touch it. So it's great. And, you know, we hit, we get really great feedback from students on ice. I don't know if you have heard some of the comments that we've gathered, we tried to ask them to leave a comment when they go. We've had people say things like, I was about to cry. And now I feel like I can get back to it, which is so great. Or the dogs took my mind off my workflow. I relaxed a ton and couldn't stop smiling. So we know from those kinds of comments that you guys do great work. Really, really appreciate it. We do it over a series of days in finals week. And I know that there are students who come every day. I've seen this, I've observed this. So that it truly is an important touchstone for them when they're feeling this high stress. Could you, could you tell us overall about Intermountain Therapy Animal Commission? Or you say you brought it here from Salt Lake. I did. I did. Intermountain Therapy Animal has been going about 30 years. The mission is to enhance the quality of life through the human animal bond. And our motto is pets helping people. And so we have mostly dogs, as you would imagine. We have quite a few cats. It's difficult for the cats though. First of all, they have to travel. And cats in the car, not always so good. And it takes a really special cat, but when you have a good cat, they're extraordinary. And we've had bunnies, guinea pigs, donkeys. We had Oliver the donkey one year. We did. He was a huge hit. Yes, he was. Yeah. He even came in the front. Well, he came in the foyer area. We did. We could not bring him all the way into the library. Well, it was raining. It was a nasty day. And then apparently the next day, he was sunny and he came out and stood outside. Wonderful. And after that, his owner told me that he was just marching around the barn insisting he wanted to go somewhere. Oh, he wanted more attention. He loved it. He was terrific. So the animals actually get something out of this Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Most of our attention is how are the dogs and the owners go through a full day workshop. We meet the first and kind of gauge whether or not the dogs truly want to meet people and gauge people. And if the owners have a good relationship with their dogs, and then the owners go through a full day workshop, and then we do an evaluation with the owner and the animal. And it's mainly to make sure that the animal is suitable. We don't just allow anybody in because if the dog is stressed, and much of our workshop is geared towards watching your animal, gauging how they're doing, or they still enjoying the interaction. I know I've had over the various therapy dogs I've had, I've watched them get less and less engaged, and know to retire them at that point. So their attitude towards the changes as they age? Age? Yeah, it's a number of factors. Sometimes they just don't enjoy it. And then, you know, it's a hard thing because the owners really want to do it. But if the dog doesn't, then you're running into potential problems. You're creating stress, which we don't want to do. No, no. And interestingly, at the library, the students not only engage with the dog, but the dogs love it. It's one of their favorite things. I mean, they have circles of hands all over there, and many of them will be outside at that point. Yeah. The students talk to each other. And so that's a nice thing. And you said earlier that the students often talk to you about their animals at home. What are some of the, do you remember any of the interesting things you've heard from students? Well, about the dogs they have at home, or the cats they have at home. You know, they miss them or whatever. And they'll have certain choices too, because we usually have maybe three dogs at a time, especially during the busy times. They'll have definite desires. Maybe they want to go to the Golden Retriever, or they want to go. And, you know, I try not to. Because, of course, my dog is the best. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I have observed that the students and the handlers, the owners of the dogs, often have some really great interactions. And that's really wonderful. That's like a sort of touchstone with home, talking to someone who has their dog with you. And it's fun to talk to them. So, how, you know, how do you personally like to do stress? Oh, I do a lot of hiking and walking. Walking, walking. With your dog? Of course. That goes without saying. I can't go anywhere without it. That's pretty much it right now. You know, everything is so different in terms of exercise. And I read. I'm glad to hear you read. That's wonderful. Well, didn't we meet at the Country Bookshelf? We did meet at the Country Bookshelf. That's right. That makes a lot of sense then. Yeah, well, you know, we love having you as part of our sort of array of de-stress. And probably the, you're the jewel in the crown. Intermittent therapy owls and positive distress is our really most popular one. We do have other resources. We have things like a whole live guide on de-stressing now, which you can find online. And I don't know, Nancy, if you knew this, but we have a treadmill desk on the first floor. Have you ever seen that? No. So there's a station on the first floor of the library where you can go and it's set to move only pretty slowly. So nobody's running at this, but you can read a book. You can do some work and bring your laptop and actually walk while you work there. So that is something you might want to try out too. Interesting. We also have, since you like to read, we also have an entire extracurricular or recreational, whatever you want to say, reading collection called Botcat Browse. And it's in the center right by the coffee bar. Okay. And the public can check those out as well. But students suggest the books, faculty suggest books. And basically we want books there that people find easy and fun to read. Because we know from studies that reading actually lowers your blood pressure. Ah, reading in dogs. Reading in dogs, they have that in common. Reading to a dog is even better for us. Yeah. That's a good segue. Yeah. There we go. Do your dogs get read too by kids? Yes. At this point, nothing is happening. Right. Basically, we're on hold, fortunately. We're not volunteering. We're not going anywhere. I'm not conducting workshops right now. And this is why we're filming this. Because we know that we are not going to be able to have Lily and her friends in the library this fall. Well, we think that's pretty much. Yeah, it's a tough time. We, we retest our dogs every two years. We're not doing testing. We're not holding workshops because it doesn't, beside proximity of all the people in the workshop. It doesn't do any good to certify and register new volunteers when they can do no. So that's kind of pointless. So basically everything is on hold at the moment. But prior to this, the RE program is one of our programs. It's Reading Education Assistance Dogs. We do have cats doing it as well. It's an incredible program. It's been going since 1991, I believe. Yeah, I think so. It's children reading to the dogs. And it takes away the peer pressure, the stress. And Casey, my second therapy dog was in that very first session we had and saw like she was a little bit shunned. And it was great. I mean, I had a little boy come over and say, I'm afraid of dogs. And I don't read very well. And I said, it's okay, she doesn't need it. He read, read her this book that was clearly two or three levels below his age. But he read it. And he jumped up at the end and said, this is the first time I've ever finished a book. Oh my gosh. And we high five. And it was great. And he came over later and said, I'm checking this out and taking it home. Oh, wonderful. So the RE program is all over the world. Literally. We have over 6000 teams. And I know that libraries love that. Public libraries do. Yeah. So, you know, there's so many different things that you guys are involved in. It's not just us. And that's great to hear. Right. Right. I mean, we go into a lot of the retirement homes and hospitals. Yes. Yeah. Any, anywhere our, our dogs are animals, I should say. Volunteer about an hour at a time. And I often have to explain the difference between a service animal and a therapy animal. And so that's sort of the first thing I usually do when I'm giving a talk. That's an important thing. Yeah. Well, I also, you know, want to point out that there are other campus resources for de-stressing. And that University Health Partners has programs, including things like Health Advancement. There's a program called WellTrack. So in, in the absence of having actual dogs here on campus this semester, students have some options. And I think we all just need to be really careful about how we're dealing with our stress at this, at this heightened stress time, which adds not just, you know, we don't just have our, our academic performance stress now. We have everything else on top of it. So we really, really appreciate your willingness to come and talk with us this way and can't wait to, you know, for when we can actually have the dog again back in the calendar. We can't either. The dogs can't, the volunteers can't. Everybody is, would love to start this again. We did do a Zoom event with Heart of the Valley, with, they had some summer camps. And once a week for six weeks, they would do a Zoom meeting with one of our teams and the children could ask and questions and the dog was there. That's a really fun idea. Yeah. Well, one of the great things about this time is that we all get to be more creative about how we deal with things and we think about doing things in new ways. For now, Lily, thank you for joining us. And thank you, Nancy, so much for all of your work and for coming here today. It's been my pleasure. It's been great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.