08/11/2026
🐾🩵 LET’S TALK ABOUT ODIE — AND THERAPY DOGS IN OUR SCHOOLS. 🩵🐾
This handsome gentleman is Odie, one of our clients here at Teal Tails — but his most important job doesn’t happen in our salon.
Odie has served as a therapy dog in an elementary school, offering something incredibly simple to the children around him: a calm, comforting, nonjudgmental presence. 🐶📚
Unfortunately, Odie will not be permitted to return to school this year.
And while we respect that decisions involving our schools require consideration of many different factors, we also think decisions like these deserve an informed conversation about what trained therapy dogs can offer our children.
Therapy dogs aren’t simply pets hanging out in classrooms.
School-based therapy dog programs can provide children with opportunities for emotional regulation, encourage positive social interactions, offer comfort during stressful or overwhelming moments, and create a welcoming environment for children who may struggle to connect or communicate in more traditional ways.
For a child having the worst day of their little life, sometimes support doesn’t look like a conversation.
Sometimes it has four paws and answers to Odie. 🩵
We believe programs that support children’s emotional wellbeing deserve to be understood, discussed, and evaluated based on their benefits — not dismissed without recognizing the impact their absence may have on the students who benefited from them.
So today we’re giving a little extra love to our very handsome client and retired-for-now elementary school employee.
Odie may not understand why he isn’t going back to his kiddos this year.
But we hope conversations like this encourage our community to learn more about therapy dogs, ask questions about the resources available to our children, and advocate for programs they believe make their schools better.
Because when something positively impacts our kids, it’s worth speaking up when it’s taken away. 🐾🩵
