Dog days at Longfellow: Traveler helps create a welcoming environment at elementary school

A Burnese mountain dog poodle mix named Traveler is something of a rock star inside the walls of Longfellow Elementary School in north Spokane. As he slowly walks down the halls, small hands reach out to give him a pat. “Hi, Traveler.”

Traveler is a therapy dog owned by Principal Adam Oakley, providing a calming presence to staff and children alike. He wanders in and out of classrooms at will, sometimes trailing behind Oakley, sometimes just going where he thinks he’s needed.

Recently, Oakley went into a third-grade classroom and found Traveler laying down on the floor in the middle of a circle of children. “There will be stretches of the day when I don’t see him,” Oakley said. “He just wanders into classrooms.”

Oakley got Traveler when he was 8 weeks old for his daughter, who has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The family had been told that she might start having trouble walking as she got older.

“He was trained as a service animal for her, to help her balance and walk,” Oakley said.

His daughter, now 14, has thankfully not needed Traveler’s assistance and Oakley began to consider how best to use Traveler. He approached Superintendent Adam Swinyard about possibly bringing Traveler to school.

“Dr. Swinyard and I were talking about how to make school more welcoming and less institutional,” he said. “I started bringing (Traveler) occasionally last year and pretty much every day this year.”

The results have been nothing but positive, Oakley said.

“It’s been so great for our kids, for our staff,” he said. “He has the ability to just drop tension, whether it’s adults or kids. You can almost feel the tension drop when he’s here.”

Students are so used to Traveler’s presence that he doesn’t cause a stir when he enters a classroom. Students reach out and pet him as he walks by, or pat his head as they work. Traveler is also extremely useful in a crisis.

“Yesterday, we had a second-grader come out of his class, fists clenched, and I just happened to be in the hallway,” Oakley said.

Oakley asked what was wrong and the boy said he didn’t want to talk about it. But he did ask if he could sit with Traveler. The two sat together for 10 minutes, then he announced he was ready to go back to class, Oakley said.

“There are just endless stories,” he said. “They’re dealing with stuff. Sometimes they don’t want to talk with the principal about what they’re going through.”

Though Traveler was not officially trained as a therapy dog, he knows who needs him, Oakley said. When he enters a classroom, he doesn’t necessarily go to the students who call out to him. He’ll go sit next to the person who he thinks needs him and lean in.

“He definitely has a sense of a kid who may need it,” he said. “There’s been times when he’s heard kids crying or screaming and he’ll take off to those rooms.”

The teachers in the school also seem to appreciate Traveler’s presence.

“There are staff members who walk into my office and say ‘I just need Traveler,’ ” he said. “This is such a hard job. They carry so much with them.”

Traveler maintains his calm demeanor in school.

“He knows when he’s working,” Oakley said. “If I let him out to go to the bathroom, he becomes a dog. He runs and plays and chases squirrels. But when he comes back in, he shuts it off.”

Traveler has a bed in Oakley’s office and also has a dog bed on his small computer cart that he pushes around the school as he goes from classroom to classroom.

“He’s pretty tired at the end of the day,” Oakley said. “He jumps in the truck and sleeps most of the way home.”

Traveler has been such a huge benefit to Longfellow that Oakley said he wishes there were more of him.

“The benefits are so big,” he said. “I wish there was a way we could get them in every school.”