Who let the dogs out? No, really — who did it? They’re about to be all over the Health and Human Services 1 lawn.
Next Tuesday, a handful of therapy dogs as well as some huge Newfoundlands will make Cal State Long Beach their pawing ground for the day. Pause 4 Paws will offer students the chance to pet therapy dogs, donate money to a local nonprofit focused on helping animals and take photos with two to four Newfoundland dogs.
The event will take place on the HHS1 lawn from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Organized by five students enrolled in CSULB’s Communication 337 Event Planning class, Pause 4 Paws aims to soothe the nerves of overstressed students as well as raise money for Long Beach-based nonprofit Friends of Long Beach Animals.
Friends of Long Beach Animals is an animal shelter that advocates for responsible pet ownership and low-cost spay and neuter programs for low-income residents of Long Beach. Senior communication major Shayna Gonzales and the rest of her group said they wanted to be able to not only give students the opportunity to decompress, but give back to the Long Beach community — and, of course, the dogs.
“They do a lot of education on correct animal care,” said senior communications major Brittany Romero. “So they go around to a lot of the Long Beach and Signal Hill elementary schools and educate the kids on pet care.”
“We wanted to create a stress-free event for students the week before finals, and we thought, ‘What better way to de-stress students than with animals?’” Gonzales said. “And so then we thought, ‘Oh, let’s bring therapy dogs on campus!’”
The group of organizers, consisting of junior and senior communications majors, will be selling raffle tickets that students can buy for $1 and all proceeds will go to Friends of Long Beach Animals.
Pause 4 Paws plans on raffling off various finals-friendly prizes to students who donate such as gift cards to Starbucks, massage gift cards and finals go-packs including Scantrons, pencils and greenbooks.
According to Romero, Pause 4 Paws will also feature a photo booth where students can donate a dollar to take photos with two bear-like Newfoundland dogs and post their photos on Instagram using the hashtag #Pause4Paws.
“We’re hoping [the Newfoundland dogs] will be kind of [be] what will attract students, like ‘Oh my God, look at these huge dogs!’ and they’ll want to either donate [for a photo] or enter for a raffle prize,” Romero said.
Gonzales said that the group’s motivation behind bringing therapy dogs to campus has to do with bringing Long Beach animals to the CSULB community.
“Long Beach is kind of like, a really big dog-friendly community,” Gonzales said. “We were going to have [the event] at [El Dorado] park. And then we thought: ‘Well, why not bring it to school during finals week?’”
Representatives from Friends of Long Beach Animals will be facilitating interaction and supervising the dogs. They will also be there to answer any questions that students interested in getting involved with the nonprofit may have.
For more information on the event, follow Pause4PawsCSULB on social media.