Meet Penny. In a news briefing on August 28th, 2023, Governor and First Lady Justice announced the planned gifting of Penny, a trained school therapy dog, to Pendleton County Middle High School as part of the Friends With Paws program, funded through West Virginia Communities In Schools (WV CIS). Penny will be one of seven new dogs joining the therapy dog team across the state. The new dogs will bring the total to 18 school therapy dogs placed in counties throughout West Virginia. Those counties include Berkeley, Greenbrier, Hardy, Kanawha, Lewis, Logan, Marshall, McDowell, Mercer, Mingo, Morgan, Pendleton, Pocahontas, Upshur, Randolph, Summers, Wayne, and Wyoming. Schools that have already implemented the Friends with Paws program have reported improvements in chronic absenteeism, anxiety-related behaviors, and school climate and culture.
Penny was born on November 29, 2022, and will come to PCMHS this fall after nearly a year of training with Ultimate Canine out of Indiana. The dogs come highly trained through this entity, with school therapy dogs being one of the highest levels of achievement. Dogs are rigorously tested in high-stress and chaotic environments and scenarios, and only the dogs with the best temperaments and highest levels of emotional awareness make it to the status of school therapy dogs. According to Katie Morris, with Governor Justices' office, Penny has excelled in the program and has a very sweet disposition. The school therapy dogs are described as well-trained, working dogs, who know and perform their jobs well.
In addition to the in-depth training the dogs receive, Ultimate Canine also comes to the school environment to train the local handlers with Penny over three days. For PCMHS that will be Liz Warner, as primary handler, and Lesley Cook, Ali Judy, and Sonya Ertel, secondary handlers. The handlers are vetted through First Lady Cathy Justices' office and must meet criteria in both their home and school environments. Handlers will also be expected to practice commands with Penny daily and renew their handler training annually.
CIS is a nationwide program, heavily data, and results-driven, with a mission of helping students remove barriers to success allowing them to stay in school and achieve in life. Championed in our state through First Lady Cathy Justice, CIS is now in over 260 schools in West Virginia, 53 out of 55 counties, and directly impacting over 100,000 children. It is through CIS WV that Friends With Paws was birthed, and the program has only added to the positive results that CIS consistently delivers nationwide. The First Lady plans to visit PCMHS this fall for a Pup Rally, where Penny will be officially gifted to the school and introduced to the PCMHS family.
