Imagine fluffy, little, cute animals’ faces comforting you while doing school work. Sounds fun, right? Wouldn’t you like to have a more relaxed school day accompanied by a school dog or cat? Having classwork breaks, accompanied by a school pet, would be relaxing and fun. High schoolers would be mentally and physically improved by this, along with it encouraging students’ attitude to attend school. 

School days can be draining, where it’s “work, work, work,” with such little time to relax and slow down, not to mention the amount of stress building because of it. A school pet (that is well-trained and taken care of, like a fostered dog of a teacher) that walks around with an adult would brighten and destress your school day. Since most classes have “tech breaks” to allow students to destress, it wouldn’t hurt to have a school pet that walks into each class some days during their break and wanders around the classroom to greet the kids or lay down. 

It’s been proven that dogs help lower stress levels, blood pressure, anxiety and drastically increase positive moods. Studies show that  “40% of students prefer pet companionship when feeling down,” and“ 53% respondents say they enjoy doing homeworks with pets nearby” (petsintheclassroom.org). Therefore, it couldn’t hurt the school to consider a school pet. It comes with extreme benefits and could definitely increase students’ productivity and outlook on coming to school. However, some cons to the idea exist. Pets may scare children, or some may have allergies. If that’s the case, you could have a specific room with the pet where students who have shown to work well with the pet can work and destress if they have anxiety or other issues or even stop in if they need a brightening to their day to see the pet. 

Our school should consider the benefits to this idea of having a school pet. It can improve students’ productivity, decrease stress levels of students, and finally allow students to relax and see improvements in their mood throughout the day.

Junior Emily Holtz is a staff writer for the 2021-2022 yearbook. She likes working out and hanging out with her dog.