Educational Dogs

Most people have heard of therapy dogs for patients - I'd like to propose educational dogs for teaching. Our class has a number of people with dogs, myself included, and one of my classmates has a little dog that comes to class every once in a while.

It's great - the dog is very well behaved and provides a nice distraction without taking much away from the lecture. Plus, it's an adorable dog!

Anyway, we were in class this week and he started barking. First time I've heard this dog really bark. The lecturer could have gotten annoyed or upset at the dog for interrupting their class, or at their owner for bringing it, but instead, they immediately quipped "See, even he thinks [insert point lecturer was making] is important!"

The whole class laughed, everyone woke up a bit, and the lecture continued without missing a beat. That's how to do education right. Sometimes, in both education and medicine, we get too caught up with etiquette and proper procedure. Having a tiny dog running around the classroom is not proper procedure for a lecture. And yet, it was an improvement having him around.

We get too worried about not doing something wrong, that we forget to stick our necks out a bit to do something right, even if it's as inconsequential as having an educational dog.