Port Lincoln High School is delighted to introduce our newest enrolment, a friendly 7-year-old girl called Hope – she is a retired racing greyhound who now spends each Wednesday with us, courtesy of her handler, Cate Harrison.
Hope is a specially-trained therapy dog – her role is to provide therapeutic intervention, reducing anxiety and improving wellbeing amongst our students and staff. On Wednesdays, she is based on the Eyre Floor and in The Hub with our Wellbeing Team, but also spends time visiting classes and interacting with students in the yard.
Hope’s presence at PLHS is an initiative of our Governing Council and has been years in the making – the project was introduced and led by long-serving Governing Councillor Latisha Proude.
After her first day on site, Cate provided the following summary:
“Hope is calm, friendly, confident and patient. She is really chilled out and it rubs off on students who have trouble self-regulating. Today has reinforced the significance of the positive outcomes that occur when students and staff connect with animals. In the afternoon, I went into three classes with children of special needs. There are a lot of staff who want their class/individual students to work with Hope.
She was bred to win races, but her destiny is to win hearts.”
~ Cate Harrison (Therapy Dog Trainer)
