Foothills Campus to host puppy rooms for second year

By Hayden McBennett, April 2 2015 —

Puppy rooms are back at the University of Calgary’s Foothills Campus.

Students’ Union faculty of medicine representative Carsten Krueger is following the lead of his predecessor, Jay Wang, by encouraging the SU to bring a puppy room to Foothills. They weren’t scheduled to return to Foothills Campus this year until Krueger convinced the SU to do so.

“It’s pretty much the main hangout for the health sciences and med students. Most of the students who are on the Foothills Campus don’t go to the main campus very often, so there’s this huge disconnect,” Krueger said.

The same organization that supplies the dogs for events held in That Empty Space, PALS, will provide dogs for Foothills.

Puppy rooms at the U of C’s main campus are held in conjunction with the SU’s Stress Less Week, which also includes de-stress packs.

The rooms are the only component of Stress Less Week at Foothills.

Krueger said students at Foothills don’t get the same type of resources to deal with stress as students on main campus.

“Space is really limited at Foothills, so we can’t exactly open a new SU Wellness Centre over there. My successors will hopefully do some other things along the lines of wellness,” Krueger said.

While the SU medicine representative has had to organize the puppy room themselves since their inception last year, Krueger hopes the faculty of medicine will start organizing the events in a few years.

Around 120 students attended the pet therapy session at Foothills last year. Although many people call them puppy rooms, the dogs PALS brings are fully grown, not puppies.

The rooms will be located in the Feesby student lounge. Foothills pet therapy will occur on April 20 from 12:30 p.m.–1:30 p.m.