LDAPA brings puppies to Quad to de-stress during finals

The dog days were over Wednesday as the quad played host to puppies ranging from six weeks to eighteen months old to play with students and faculty.

The Seeing Eye organization brought their energetic puppies-in-training from Morristown, N.J. to Lafayette, so students could enjoy a study break. Crowds of students gathered around each puppy and collectively “awwed” to just about everything the puppies did.

“This makes me happy because I love dogs,” Toni Michaels ’18 said. “I have a dog and it reminds me that I’ll be home in about a week.”

According to the American Journal of Health Studies, when students are excessively stressed—such as during finals week—they can experience physical and psychological impairment. This hinders academic performance.

One way to prevent this is to reduce the amount of stress that students experience. Research studies have shown that playing with dogs can help reduce stress by increasing the level of stress-reducing hormone, oxytocin and reducing the level of the stress hormone, cortisol, that is produced. In fact, many more colleges are using dogs as stress relievers for students before a hectic week filled with final exams and projects.

“Just the sight of the little puppies running around filled me with cheerfulness,” Rohjae Panton ‘18 said.