There’s a new face at Peterborough Elementary School, and he’s not a student or a teacher. 

Twelve-week-old Charlie is a Labrador puppy with a big job ahead of him. He will be the school’s facility therapy dog, and the students already love him. 

Melissa Saari, founder of New Ipswich-based nonprofit ColdSprings Healing Paws Foundation, has been training dogs for 20 years. She has placed therapy dogs in Fall Mountain Regional Schools, as well as schools in Portsmouth and North Conway. 

In 2020 Saari and PES were talking about the idea of having a therapy dog. The pandemic pushed back the plan, but in 2022, the school board unanimously voted to accept a therapy dog at the elementary school. ColdSprings Healing Paws Foundation will be donating Charlie and his training; he is not paid for by the school. 

Saari has been bringing dogs to assemblies and classrooms for years, and teachers noticed the impact it had on their students. 

“Watching what happened when she came with her dog – a calmness in the room – the ways students engaged,” second-grade teacher Shannon Dunning said. She will be Charlie’s handler and full-time dog mom and will have to be go through training herself. Charlie will live with her family, which includes three other Labs, and will come to school with her four days a week when he’s ready. 

He’ll spend time in classrooms and the special education department. He’ll be trained in behavior interruption for when a student is having a rough day.

Saari had been coming to Dunning’s classroom with therapy dogs for 10 years. They would help with reading units and students had the opportunity to interact with them.

“Seeing how much the kids talked about her dogs after the visit and the calming impact it had on the students really inspired me to start this,” Dunning said.

The students wanted to read to the dogs, practice math and write to them, and Dunning said even her hesitant readers were engaged and excited to read out loud. 

Dogs don’t judge children, and “it’s amazing how kids can open up with an animal in front of them,” Dunning said. And the students will grow up with Charlie. Dunning said Charlie has taken a field trip to the school twice, and the first time he visited he didn’t know how to climb stairs. The second time he came, he did. Dunning said the students were able to observe that growth.

“It’s so neat to see how proud they were,” she said. 

Having a therapy dog at school “changes the pace of the day,” Saari said. “It adds a new texture.”

She said that when Charlie finishes his training, he will know 100 different words or commands like “sit down,” “back up,” “heel,” “roll over,” “turn the lights on” and “open the door.”

A school therapy dog isn’t a job for just any dog. Since the litter was born, Saari observed the puppies to pick the dog that would best fit the role. 

“The job is hard,” she said.

There are hundreds of students who will be touching Charlie, and she explained that a school therapy dog needs to think and then react, which was a trait they saw in Charlie. 

“He right off the bat showed a curious but laid-back disposition,” Saari said. 

Charlie will have to pass a therapy dog certification test as well as a public access test which ColdSprings Healing Paws Foundation requires of their facility therapy dogs. This is the same test that a service dog would be required to pass, but Charlie will not be a service dog. 

Especially around children, Saari said therapy dogs “need to be elite.” Charlie will log almost 10,000 hours of training before he’s ready to take his tests, which Saari hopes will be late next fall. 

“My goal is that he’s certified by the time he’s 15 months,” she said. 

Saari had asked Dunning to choose a name for the dog that had a legacy. Dunning thought about Charlie’s job and thought about who in her life has consistently supported children, local people and had given back to the community.

She decided the two people in her life who had made the biggest impact were her dad, Dick Dunning, and his close friend, the late Jim Grant. Her father was a beloved teacher and principal, and he’s currently a member of the school board. Grant was a teacher and Peterborough-based philanthropist who founded the Sunshine Fund, which is still active today.

Dunning said they both had a “passion for helping others.” Jim Grant’s full name was  Charles James Grant, and her father is a  Vietnam veteran whose military call sign was Bravo Seaside Nephew. Dunning settled on the full name Charlie Bravo Seaside Nephew.

“My heart felt like that’s a perfect fit,” she said, “My hope is that Charlie can make these two people proud.”

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