Sophia Ramseyer gets a nuzzle from Jake the therapy dog as a group of kids gather around Jake and his owner/handler, Donna Birtwistle, in Cindy Kamimae’s second grade class at Chenowith Elementary School. Behind Sophia is Abby Moore, and to the right is Aitza Manzo Vega. In front, from left, is Jacy Baldwin and Riley Murphey. In back is Cesar Tellez Gonzalez.
Sophia Ramseyer gets a nuzzle from Jake the therapy dog as a group of kids gather around Jake and his owner/handler, Donna Birtwistle, in Cindy Kamimae’s second grade class at Chenowith Elementary School. Behind Sophia is Abby Moore, and to the right is Aitza Manzo Vega. In front, from left, is Jacy Baldwin and Riley Murphey. In back is Cesar Tellez Gonzalez.
Jake the therapy dog is a patient listener and a tolerant companion, and on his weekly visits to Cindy Kamimae’s second grade class at Chenowith Elementary, the effect on the students is noticeable.
His owner, Donna Birtwistle, of Moro, can see the students calm down when he arrives. Students take turns walking with Jake and Birtwistle to the library, where they get to read to Jake for 5-15 minutes.
Birtwistle said when Jake comes to visit, the students are more settled, and they take instruction better.
Kamimae said in their visits, which last 60 to 90 minutes, Jake, a great Pyrenees mix, will get read to by five or six kids.
Kamimae said Birtwistle provides a “healing connection” for the students. She is “Just one more person who truly cares and loves them and you can see the love come back and the feel-good. They know they’re important to her.”
Jake is a trained emotional support assistance dog, said Birtwistle. “Sometimes they come from broken homes and they need that support because Jake gives it unconditionally.”
“He just walks around and puts his head in their laps,” Birtwistle said, or he just lays there and they feel more secure.
Great Pyrenees are guard dogs bred to patrol perimeters, so “this is an unusual situation that Jake is in for his breed. They are a very relaxed type of dog,” she said.
“To be a therapy dog, a dog has to get along with other dogs, they have to love kids and they have to tolerate having their ears being pulled on, their tails being pulled on and just being touched all over,” she said.
“They have to have a lot of confidence in themselves because they can’t be shy and they can’t be aggressive,” she said. They also can’t demand attention from their owner and they can’t react to other dogs.
“He likes to know what is going on but he doesn’t make a pest of himself,” said Birtwistle, who is a retired nurse. She received her RN while in the Army, and stayed in the service for 33 years as a nurse. She was stationed for seven years in Germany and was deployed to Operation Desert Storm.
After she retired from the Army, she worked for a time at Oregon Health & Science University. When she retired from there, she moved back to her hometown of Moro.
“I got tired of drinking coffee and chatting with the girls,” she said, so she went back to college and got an associate’s degree in early childhood education in 2010 from Columbia Gorge Community College.She worked for a time at Head Start, but decided that wasn’t her niche. “I decided I really wanted to do pet therapy in school.”
She got a pup, who sadly died at just 10 months, leaving Birtwistle heartbroken. But then she went to Home at Last, “and there was Jake. He was a big dog and he needed a job and I needed a job.”
The principal at Chenowith, Anne Shull, agreed to give the pet therapy a try for three months. That was nearly three years ago, “and I’ve been here ever since,” Birtwistle said.
Last Thursday wasn’t a typical day. Birtwistle brought in a craft project and Jake just lounged around while the kids worked on it. Kids would pet him if he happened to walk by them.In February, when Birtwistle heads to Alaska to help out with the Iditarod, the famous endurance dog sled race, the students will once again get to follow events back home.
She shares the racing lingo with the kids, and each kid picks a racer to cheer on. “They could really feel the experience the best they can without being there. It was really amazing what she did,” Kamimae said.
Last year, she brought back signed posters from the mushers. “She did a really nice job,” Kamimae said. “She’s a generous person with a big, big heart.”
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