I am not sure if you are familiar with these song lyrics, “What’s so funny about Peace, Love, and Understanding.” Elvis Costello made it famous but it was written by Nick Lowe. I recently borrowed it as the tagline for School Dogs. Today, I am going to share how School Dogs has evolved over the past year or so.
School Dogs began when we started Adams Farm Labradoodles. We feel that many of our Australian Labradoodles would make great therapy dogs. As a parent of two school-age kids, we think that they are especially suited to work in schools with kids. We currently have two puppies who are in training to be just that.
However, there are many obstacles for schools starting a therapy dog program. With that being said, School Dogs has also been developed to serve teachers and schools who already have a therapy dog program. School Dogs includes several dog training and socialization courses as well as other resources.
For the past six months or more, I have been working on building a library of SEL – or Social Emotional Learning – Lesson Plans that integrate SEL objectives with Animal Assisted Interventions. Each lesson plan included a short two or three minute video that highlighted the learning objective of the specific lesson plan.
Working with several AI tools, I created outlines for the plans and accompanying videos. I have made a lot of progress but continued to run into tech glitches or problems. The first glitch was that I could create Lesson Plans but I couldn’t get it to print correctly from a web browser. I’m still working on this issue.
As I struggled with overcoming some of these tech problems, the AI tools continued to improve dramatically. Suddenly it became possible to create AI generated videos for the lesson plans as well as for our dog training courses. My first idea was to create videos that users could watch as part of their lesson plans or dog training courses. In order to make them kid-friendly, I wanted to include kid characters in the videos. I worked with several AI chat bots to create an awesome plan that included taking high quality photos of our two kids and three dogs. AI even gave me the list of equipment that I would need to make the perfect photographs to use in AI video generation.
The one thing that Gemini forgot to tell me, however, was that I could not upload pics of children to use to create AI videos. I have to admit that I was kind of irritated but I decided to pivot and decided to create adult Dog Handler and Teachers for these videos. Genius, right?
As I started to play around with these tools and create videos, I suddenly realized that we might be able to create something even better than a video. Instead, we could perhaps build a virtual School Dog that the “user” experiences and interacts with.
Although School Dogs is still evolving,
My heart and gut told me right then and there that this was my mission and that through new technologies, we could bring our Australian Labradoodles to schools and families without any obstacles. As a parent, I am also aware of the dangers that these new technologies present. Please note, that I will address these concerns and how we plan to manage them in an upcoming email.
Three Pillars of Our Mission:
☮️ Peace – Creating calm, safe spaces where children and adults can learn and grow
❤️ Love – Building genuine connections between humans and our gentle Australian Labradoodles
🎓 Understanding – Developing emotional intelligence and social skills that last a lifetime
How We’re Different
We’re not just a dog program. We’re a comprehensive social-emotional learning experience that includes:
Physical Therapy Dogs trained specifically for educational and therapeutic settings
Virtual Well-Behaved Dogs for remote learning and digital engagement
Forever Family Community where adoptive families become part of our mission
Collectible Puppy Cards that make learning fun and engaging
Why Now?
After the challenges of recent years, children need emotional support more than ever. Teachers are looking for innovative ways to engage students. Families want meaningful connections.
School Dogs bridges all of these needs with the gentle wisdom of Australian Labradoodles.
Tomorrow, we’ll share something important—the mental health crisis that inspired this mission.
With love and excitement,
Douglas & the School Dogs Team 🐾
P.S. Winnie’s puppies are doing amazing! We’ll have photos in our next emails.