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What do you get when you take dogs (and their handlers) from UBC Okanagan’s BARK Program (Building Academic Retention through K9's), 10 UBC students, and 22 kids from the Central Okanagan Boys and Girls Club?
Well, you get a pilot program that is helping to build the social and leadership skills of those young children, who are between the ages of 5 and 12.
With a dog and a UBC student at their side, the children (perhaps tentatively at first) interact with students on campus.
Some reassurance from big, puppy dog eyes hopefully eases some of the trepidation the kids may feel as they go from shaking a paw, to shaking a hand.
"We use the dogs as a catalyst to develop those social skills," explains Associate Professor and Director of BARK John-Tyler Binfet.
The program also has kids learning about perspective, and that was accomplished with the help of a three-legged dog that until just recently was a street dog in Taiwan.
Binfet hopes the program could be expanded regionally, provincially and maybe even nationally.
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