All opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Edinburgh.
Laura is one of the founders of Paws on Campus; she developed the programme with her supervisor Jo Williams, volunteers from Therapets, and Dr Andrew Gardiner of The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. This innovative new programme, less than a year old, is already supporting students through combined clinical psychology and veterinary science. We asked Laura about her experience working on the programme, its impact on students who are struggling, and the mental health lessons we can all learn from our furry friends.
How did the idea for Paws on Campus begin? Who was involved?
My BSc was actually in Zoology, so I’ve been interested in what we can learn from animals for a long time. It also led to my interest in animal-assisted therapy. Animal welfare was a huge part of my PhD work too, which included working with the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA), who are now part of the Paws on Campus advisory board.
My supervisor Professor Jo Williams, our principal investigator and grant holder, has been working on the human-animal bond for years; she was also interested in setting up and evaluating a campus dog programme. We coordinated with Dr Andrew Gardiner at the Dick Vet, who helped secure the space for us. He’ll also be involved with some of the research from a veterinary science perspective, when we have the time and funding to set that up properly, with Jo and myself working on it from a clinical psychology angle.
After those initial conversations, things moved quite quickly. We asked students from the vet school to volunteer for our initial batch of trial sessions, as well as involving volunteers and dogs from Therapets (Canine Concern Scotland Trust). We’ve just finished our first official block of sessions with referred students this summer - it’s quite hard to believe how much has happened in less than a year!
What would you say is the project’s overarching vision or ethos?
Obviously, improving student wellbeing is at the core of everything we've designed. What's special about Paws on Campus is it provides a slightly different route into seeking support. We’ve already got comments from some students saying that one-on-one therapy might be too intense for them. So I think this can actually break down those barriers, for those who might otherwise be a bit daunted by therapy.
It’s also about exploring what works for you. Some people might go to therapy and be a bit discouraged that a specific approach, like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for example, hasn't really clicked with them. We cover several approaches, so students can then seek out one they feel they click with.
Finally, the positive benefits of the human animal bond is really motivating; I think animals have so much to offer us! We can sometimes forget humans are animals too. Spending time with dogs reminds us of the core truths of life, and to be mindful of them. That’s what Paws on Campus is all about.
How does your approach, combining clinical psychology and veterinary science, impact student mental health and wellbeing?
Paws on Campus is a ‘psycho-educational intervention’: the idea is that students leave the programme with the tools for sustained improvement. They're learning skills and a number of psychological techniques, as well the parallels between canine wellbeing and their own.
The way we've structured it, canine welfare is a central part of the psycho-education as well. It’s more of a theme for some sessions than others, but we always come back to the dog’s welfare, because we're always linking back to what we can learn from dogs. A happy dog is the one we want to learn from! I think the veterinary science aspect will be really important for the evaluation too. Animal welfare is often not considered as much as it should be in programmes like these, so we're really keen to have that at the forefront of how we're evaluating right from the start.
Spending time with dogs reminds us of the core truths of life, and to be mindful of them. - Dr Laura Wauthier
How do you promote an understanding of canine welfare?
It’s actually a key message for our sessions, because a dog’s welfare has to be good for us to draw lessons from them. A dog who’s relaxed and happy is going to act very differently compared to a dog who is stressed out. Both Andrew Gardiner and the SSPCA have helped us ensure we’re factoring the dogs’ wellbeing and choice into all our sessions.
We start the programme by looking at dog behavior and body language, to understand their subtler stress signals. This also covers “petted consent”, looking for signs like leaning in or turning away to see whether they want to be pet or not. Then we start making links between dog welfare and wellbeing. We discuss the five freedoms of animal welfare (from pain, suffering, hunger and so on) then expand past that into providing positives, to ensure they're actually happy. This is true for humans too - we need to ensure we're not just reaching the bare minimum, but bringing positive routines into our daily lives.
One of our students said she’d never thought about things from a dog's perspective in this way before. It’s definitely changed how I interact with my dogs too, now I see things from their side!
At the vet school, we find students are often more engaged, relaxed and communicative in classes with animals. It’s a kind of animal magic, so it is wonderful to see this being used to support student well-being in an informed way at Paws on Campus. - Dr Andrew Gardiner
Could you tell us a bit about what makes Paws on Campus unique?
University-based animal interventions are usually in short bursts, like the Paws Against Stress programme (run by the counselling service) which provides 15 minute interactions with a dog during exam periods. That’s great for providing stress relief on the day, maybe even for a couple of days. But there's not really any supporting content or underlying reflection to support that, so you wouldn't necessarily expect to see long-lasting benefits. We wanted to provide something a little bit higher level for students really struggling with anxiety and depression.
Also, it’s not just psycho-education and a dog happens to be there; the dog is integral to the learning. Psychology is primarily very cognitive and verbal, but we’re a bit more focused on experiential learning. We discuss a theme in each session, then immediately you see that theme come to life by interacting with the dog in a certain way.
Each of your sessions focuses on specific learning outcomes and therapeutic objectives – what are some of these objectives?
Each session has a common structure of four elements. We start with a grounding exercise before introducing a psychoeducational theme for the session. Then, this is the big one, we do an activity with the dog that reflects that theme, before wrapping up with a group discussion.
We start with the basic CBT model in session one, exploring how to recognise thoughts and feelings in ourselves and in dogs. Session two covers (human) wellbeing and (dog) welfare, while session three covers compassion focused therapy, looking at how to communicate compassionately with the dogs, each other and ourselves. Session four is learning through play, which is the natural way all mammals learn and is easy to lose sight of at university.
Finally, we cover asking for help, so students feel comfortable asking for help if they need it down the line. We have a fun game here with clicker training, which is when you pair treats with something that makes a clicking noise as a form of positive reinforcement for dogs. I get the students to clicker train each other; they're not allowed to speak and their partner picks an unknown behavior for them to figure out. It really makes you realise how much dogs are problem-solving!
Free programmes like these make me feel the university is here to support me as a holistic human being. That positive feeling translates into my academic work… I just feel more connected and happier overall to be affiliated with the university. - Student from Paws on Campus’ 2022 trial sessions
📷 Laura’s dog, Lola, problem solving for Paws on Campus! Photo by Laura Wauthier.
How do you foresee Paws on Campus working as a part of the University’s mental health and wellbeing services in the future?
We've worked really hard from the outset to make sure we're integrated with the Student Wellbeing service. We ran the latest sessions over summer, taking referrals from the University’s student wellbeing advisors, to see where our numbers lie. In the future, we might try to expand to add different referral routes from the counselling service or ResLife, depending on both their workload and our numbers. We don't want students to be disappointed and unable to access it, but we also obviously don't want too many empty spaces. From a research perspective, we also need a bit of a waiting list to evaluate as a control group.
In terms of longevity, I’ve had initial conversations with other colleagues working in psychotherapy across the University, to discuss how they might be able to help deliver Paws on Campus. I’d also be interested in a ‘by students, for students’ model, so those who have finished the programme could potentially be trained to deliver it - or at least volunteer for future sessions. We’ll deliver exclusively at Edinburgh for at least another year, to get all our procedures and feedback in place, but then we could potentially even open up Paws on Campus to other universities in the future!
In my 30 years at the University of Edinburgh, I’ve seen a growing number of students really struggle with mental health issues, a global phenomenon in many universities. Our aim is to develop a programme that can endure for the longer term, to support those experiencing stress, anxiety and depression. - Professor Jo Williams
How has support from the Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS) impacted the project?
Development work started in 2019, but the PTAS award gave us the funding to properly start implementation. It has directly funded my employment, resources for the programme and a donation to Canine Concern Scotland Trust for their volunteers’ time. As funding goes it was a quick turnaround too, which really allows us to be dynamic and quickly get an innovative idea off the ground. It's been less than a year from the initial idea to where we are now!
So Paws on Campus wouldn’t necessarily have been possible without that funding. It allows us as researchers to do innovative projects like this, combining student wellbeing and learning; that’s something I feel should be central to the whole ethos of the University.
About the Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme
Paws on Campus is supported by the Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme, which provides University staff with grants towards projects enhancing teaching, learning or assessment practices.
📷Cover photo by Neil Hanna.