Cara Zelas

And that's a way of co-regulation and co-regulating the emotions using little dude.

So, yeah.

Yeah, I think with a dog coming into the classroom, in my experience, if there are children that are afraid of dogs, they won't come near the dog.

I may say sit at the back with the teacher.

But usually when they see all their friends interacting with the dog and they see it's safe, then they feel relaxed and calm.

What kind of dog is little dude?

You're sitting here next to me.

This is Little Dude.

He is a dude.

So Little Dude and I, when he was a puppy, he was just such a sweet little dog and brought me and my husband so much love and happiness.

And I really wanted to do some volunteer work in the community where I was living in New York City.

And so I trained Little Dude to be a therapy dog with the Good Dog Foundation.

And we volunteered with them for about 10 years.

it was through that experience volunteering that i realized the importance of human connection and being kind to others and how important that was so i asked the head of school i was teaching at a montessori school in upper west side can i bring little dude into the classroom to teach the kids about kindness and what a therapy dog does and she's like of course and so i brought him in and then

I just, it was like an aha moment.

Like all the kids were very curious, engaged, motivated, and they loved the story of little dude and.

So I decided to write a book series about little dude.

But at the same time, I also noticed, you know, we teach ABCs and one, two, threes in such an explicit way in early childhood.

Why are we teaching social skills in an explicit way?

Like how to make a friend?