Day of the dog at West Elementary School

West Elementary School meets its new therapy dog

West School students in Rebekah Walker's second-grade class were introduced to the school's newest four-legged staff member named Parker. He works for attention, mostly petting, but will also accept hugs.
West School students in Rebekah Walker's second-grade class were introduced to the school's newest four-legged staff member named Parker. He works for attention, mostly petting, but will also accept hugs.

A newly hired dog got to know his workplace Tuesday alongside his professional teammate.

"You remember your first day of school? You're nervous and kind of scared. He's still kind of the same way," Shawn Meinhardt told a class of second-graders at West Elementary School as he introduced them to his working partner - Parker, a 16-month-old yellow Labrador.

He took Parker from classroom to classroom Tuesday to introduce the dog to the students. Most students in the second-grade class raised their hands when Meinhardt, a fifth-grade teacher at West Elementary, asked if they have a dog at home as a pet.

"The thing that's different about Parker is that he's not a pet. He's a working dog. Yes, he is a pet, because he comes home with me, but he's a working dog. Everything he does, he has to be told. He can't do anything without me telling him to - eating, playing, anything," he explained.

Parker and Meinhardt are a certified assistance dog team. Parker - named after the Portland, Oregon-based Parker Management modeling agency - will be West Elementary's first therapy dog.

"It's been in the works for quite a long time," West Elementary Principal Brandi Fatherley said. Fatherley said her children attended Thorpe Gordon Elementary School, and she remembers the positive effect a therapy dog had there.

She said Meinhardt expressed interest in becoming certified to work with a therapy dog about a year and a half ago. There's a long waitlist and extensive training involved.

The school district pays for the dog and handler's training, she said.

Another district employee who owns a therapy dog that works for students said last year in exchange for the district's paying for the training, employees sign a three-year commitment to stay in the district.

Before Parker and his live therapy services, students used plush bulldog pup toys, weighted to be something like a real dog - there were three in Fatherley's office. Now, students have a whole other animal.

"He's a very mellow dog," Meinhardt said, adding Parker gets only slightly more excited when the vest that signifies his on-the-job status comes off.

He said he owned a lab before but had to put it down. He figured if he was going to get a new dog, it could be an opportunity for the students with whom he works.

"It just sounded like something that'd be tremendous for the school," he said.

Therapy dogs at other schools in the district including Southwest Early Childhood Center, Lewis and Clark and Thomas Jefferson middle schools, and Jefferson City High School have helped students manage the behavioral effects of conditions such as autism, Down syndrome, anxiety and anger issues.

Meinhardt said he'd like to get Parker involved with students' reading times and counselor lessons at West Elementary.

He said Parker pulled an inmate bound to a wheelchair to his meals at a jail in Florence, Colorado. Inmates work with the dogs as puppies initially for several months to housebreak them and teach them basic commands before the animals are socialized with other people - in Parker's case, at another jail in Kansas then with a young woman who was a college student at Iowa State University.

Later training tested Parker to see if he could remain focused and obedient to Meinhardt in public. He was lined up against a wall in a shopping mall with other dogs in training and had to stay down on the floor and ignore a treat placed in front of him and a ball bounced around him.

Parker passed all of his training, and he walked across a stage upon his graduation.

Meinhardt said he expects Parker to work around West Elementary pretty much full time starting next school year.