Students, faculty, and staff at Ohio State Lima received some top-notch quality time with man's best friend!
Friday, Brienne the yellow lab and Violet Mae the Bichon Frisé from the certified therapy dog program "Buckeye Paws" visited OSU Lima to bring some unconditional love. The Buckeye Paws program was developed prior to COVID-19 to promote mental and emotional well-being for health care providers at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and began one week before COVID-related restrictions began in March 2020. In March of this year, Buckeye Paws was expanded to provide mental health support to all students, faculty, and staff throughout the Ohio State University, and the response has been incredibly positive.
"We just expanded to main campus in March of '22. We introduced the dogs at the Ohio Union on the Oval. We had a huge response, and the following day, had 240 requests for visits. And we're quite busy over finals week. It slowed down a little bit in the summer, but we picked right back up when students came back to campus," said Beth Steinberg, OSU Wexner Medical Center & Center for Integrative Health.
All dogs in the Buckeye Paws program are temperament tested and receive certification through the canine good citizen and alliance of therapy dogs, and a group of researchers are presently studying the impact the Buckeye Paws program has on mental health maintenance for students, faculty, and staff.
