On Tuesday, BCCHS had puppies for all students to pet(in small groups) for the purpose of relieving stress. The counselors at BCCHS did this to help all students relax before finals. Despite our school having good intentions with this activity, this was not beneficial for all parties involved.

We used these puppies for our benefit to relax before finals, but what about the poor puppies?

You are releasing your stress but creating some stress for the puppies. These puppies were overwhelmed by all the strangers surrounding and petting them.

They are small animals that get startled and get scared easily. Not everyone has good intentions and some students could manhandle or hurt these poor animals.

The school should consider an alternative activity to help students release stress. These puppies are animals and not just objects to be fiddled with. An alternative activity could feature service dogs that are trained and are comfortable and used to people petting them to help relieve stress.

The school did something similar with bunnies as they had bunnies for students to go and pet in hopes to release stress. They did this before finals last semester just as they did it this semester.

There was a huge line of people waiting to pet these bunnies, and these small animals were probably so overwhelmed, scared, and confused by the sheer number of people surrounding and reaching out to them.

Another alternative activity could be allowing students to let loose before finals–an example of this is allowing students a catch-up day. The school did this when school was on Zoom, and it was a day when teachers didn’t assign any more assignments and allowed students to catch up on missing assignments.

Overall, I believe the school should do more research when doing activities involving living creatures. It is common knowledge that puppies are easily startled, and so it surprises me how this was so easily overlooked by the school.