As students walked to and from classes yesterday afternoon, stressing about upcoming final exams, their worries were forgotten for a while with a little help from man’s best friend.
Pause 4 Paws, which was held on the Health and Human Services lawn, brought therapy dogs to Cal State Long Beach to help students de-stress and unwind. The event was planned and hosted as a class project by students from CSULB’s Communication Professional Event Planning class.
Sophomore communications major and Paws 4 Pause organizer Kyle Soeltz, said his group had been working on this event since the beginning of the spring semester.
“We actually wanted to have [the event] during finals week so people coming out of their classes crying because of their finals would have this,” Soeltz said.
He said his group originally planned for around 300 attendees. However, even as Pause 4 Paws was being set up, students started gathering in large numbers, waiting for the dogs to arrive. After seeing the crowd gathering, Soeltz said his group underestimated how popular the event was going to be.
When the first dogs arrived, students immediately began pulling out their phones and taking pictures.
One dog in particular, Coco, was very popular among students. The Golden Retriever was extremely social, licking anyone who reached to pet her.
“[My group] loves dogs and this kind of event has happened before by Disabled Student Services,” Soeltz said. “We thought this would be an easy, fun event for everyone and we’d get to help out an organization at the same time.”
At the event, attendees were able to pet and take pictures with several different breeds of therapy dogs, including two huge Newfoundlands.
Pause 4 Paws even had a cardboard polaroid frame students could hold up for photos with “Pause 4 Paws 2016” written on it in silver glitter.
The Newfoundland dogs were provided by the Southern California Newfoundland Rescue Corp. According to group’s Treasurer and Medical Director Laurie Shapiro, the Newfoundlands are rescue dogs.
One of the Newfoundlands was a giant ball of fluff named Molly.
Shapiro said that Molly, like many other dogs, was bought by someone who later realized they couldn’t take care of her. Molly was then relinquished to the SCNRC, put into a new home and trained as a therapy dog.
Students were also able to purchase raffle tickets for the chance to win a variety of prizes including gift cards and school supplies.
All the money from the raffle was donated to Friends of Long Beach Animals, a non-profit organization that works with animals in the Long Beach area.
“We raise money so we can make sure that the animals never have needs for anything,” said Friends of Long Beach Animals President Shirley Vaughan. “Our shelter here in Long Beach services four cities … [we] try to get all the animals rescued …to cut down on euthanasia rates.”
According to Vaughan, the money raised from yesterday’s event will help fund a dual purpose veterinary clinic in Long Beach. She said that the clinic will provide medical care to shelter pets five days a week and low cost spay and neuter services the other two days.