It’s no secret that Duo Dog Coleman has stolen the hearts of the children, families, staff members and volunteers at The Children’s Place. Even though it hasn’t even been a year since our beloved pup joined the team, he has already become a vital presence to welcome children into our building, meet families as they tour the agency, attend all-staff meetings, and participate in therapy sessions.
Coleman joins in on so many aspects of The Children’s Place’s day-to-day programming and culture, and he’s even become the most frequent user of our ice machine (with his handlers’ help) as he loves crunching ice cubes.
Here are just a few of the special memories Coleman has been a part of recently:
Coleman loves getting to join his friends in speech therapy sessions. In one recent session, Coleman got to join his preschool-aged friend in a pretend drive-through fast food restaurant right in our speech therapy office. Coleman and his pal ordered a Happy Meal, a chocolate milk, a hashbrown, two fries and one doggie treat—all for $5!
One of the children in our Day Treatment program has been working on being safe and calm around his pet dogs at home, so our team started using Coleman to model and teach these skills. The child’s therapist asked how Coleman might feel when the child throws toys at him, and the child selected a feelings bottle labeled with “scared.” The child and the therapist compared the “scared” and “calm” faces on different feelings bottles, and the child then gave Coleman a big hug while holding the “calm” bottle.
Before a child starts in our Day Treatment program, they are invited to tour our building so that both the child and their family can see the classrooms, therapy playrooms, playground and more. Coleman often joins families on these tours, and one of our recent tour visitors loved him so much she didn’t want to leave! This little one is just two years old, so Coleman is nearly bigger than she is, but she was head over heels for our furry friend. The good news is even though she had to say goodbye to Coleman after her tour, he was there to greet her when she arrived at The Children’s Place for her first day.
As an early childhood mental health treatment center, a bittersweet part of the year is when we celebrate the children who are graduating from our Day Treatment program and heading on to kindergarten. This spring marked the first class to graduate since Coleman joined our team last fall, and we hope it’s the first of many he’ll help send off! To celebrate, Coleman gave each child a photo of the two of them together, along with stickers featuring his face for their pencil boxes or water bottles. The children’s families joined us for the graduation ceremony, and many of them were excited to get to meet Coleman themselves, sharing how they have heard so much about their child’s puppy friend.
One of our little friends had been absent from our Day Treatment program for a while, and our staff promised that when she came back, Duo Dog Coleman would be waiting for her in a surprise costume. Coleman looked even sweeter than normal dressed as a banana split to greet her! This child has had a hard time telling mom goodbye in the past after long absences, but Coleman and his costume did the trick and she went right to class!
Coleman has become such a special part of The Children’s Place team that it’s hard to encompass his impact in just a few words. One of the children we serve put it best when he told us, “When I met Coleman, he started to be my favorite thing.”
