Good Dog Award Winner – Kogod School of Business

The Good Dog Blog will be awarding a weekly “Good Dog Award” to those doing good things for dogs.

This week’s award goes to the American University’s Kogod Business School’s audience dog program. “Audience dogs” are brought in to be calming, non-judging listeners for business students preparing presentations. The program was initiated by Bonnie Auslander, the director of the Kogod Center for Business Communications, as a way to reduce student speech anxiety.

The pilot program was started after seeing the difference that therapy dogs visits made on campus during final exams. Many universities have therapy dog programs that utilize a dog’s ability to provide comfort to students that are away from home and friends and cramming for exams. The Audience Dog program takes things a step further, pairing students with public speaking anxieties with dogs with calm personalities.

Check out the Kogod Business School’s audience dogs in action, our Good Dog Award winners!