Therapy Dog Program Offers Wonderful SEL Benefits for Entire School Community

Canine Inspired Change (CIC)
By Erin Jorich, Communications Director for CIC

MELA is proud to Partner with Canine Inspired Change (CIC) to offer a Therapy Dog program at MELA Charter School. Read below to learn more about this program and how our students benefit from it!

Canine Inspired Change (CIC) is a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization that provides social-emotional therapy dog programming at schools and institutions throughout the Twin Cities. Supported by volunteers and their CIC-trained family pets, CIC has partnered with schools, like MELA, to facilitate therapy dog sessions with students to overcome trauma, social struggles and isolation by sparking meaningful connections with dogs, volunteers and each other since 2010.

Each CIC program is specifically designed for a school and their demographic. A typical in-school program will consist of 8-10 weekly sessions. In a CIC session students will:

• Connect with how they’re feeling and learn calming techniques like Deep Dog Breaths.
• Develop forms of communication through dog training skills. Teachers and volunteers will instruct students on how to use their voice and body language to clearly direct a dog through skills like sit, stay, and come.
• Work as a team in fun, dog-involved activities and games.
• Share kindness with their classmates.
• Gain self-confidence by taking a dog through an agility course and show off their new skills in front of their family and classmates in a final performance.​

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CIC at MELA

CIC and MELA first teamed up in 2018. MELA students have gained a tremendous amount of pride and a sense of accomplishment through CIC’s programming. Staff and volunteers have often shared that MELA is one of their favorite schools to work with their dogs! MELA students are always eager to learn and participate when the dogs arrive.

Dogs have a powerful way of connecting humans to themselves and their community. CIC looks forward to creating more canine-inspired connections at MELA in the coming years.

You can find out more about Canine Inspired Change at https://canineinspiredchange.org/

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