By C1 Staff
CANADA — A former Candian corrections officer recently gave students at Landing Trail Intermediate School an anti-bulling message using her dog, Toby Jr.
Charmaine Hammond, who was a corrections officer out of college and thus had a close study of human behavior, used her dog to teach the students about acceptance according to the Athabasca Advocate.
She told the story of how she and her husband adopted a 5-year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Toby (the father of the dog she brought to her presentation) who seemed perfectly behaved. Then when she came home from work one day, she found her home utterly destroyed.
While others might have taken the dog straight back from where they got it, Hammond brought in a trainer who said the dog needed something to do to keep him from his destructive tendencies. Toby Sr. went on to become a therapy dog visiting patients at a hospital every Wednesday.
As she watched the dog who destroyed her house help heal people, Hammond was inspired to write about the acceptance Toby Sr. had taught her.
She also shared a dog-centric anti-bullying message that relied on phrases like ‘pawsitively improving lives through an ambassadog’ and ‘BARK: Be Accepting, Respectful and Kind.’
Hammond says her message is nothing new, but having Toby Jr. help spread the message makes it safer for children to talk about the issues at hand. She said it also makes the experience memorable.