Little Keswick School
Keswick, VA

---

Little Keswick Welcomes
Barter To Staff

At Little Keswick School, teaching is not just what happens in the classroom. Sometimes boys need to learn outside the box.

Little Keswick School is honored to announce the newest staff member to our school community, Barter, a facility assistance dog! After over a year of applications and interviews the school has been awarded the opportunity to receive a facility dog for the school through a nonprofit organization, Canine Companions for Independence (CCI). This organization enhances the lives of people by providing highly trained assistance dogs and ongoing support to ensure quality partnerships. The dogs spend six to nine months training with professional CCI instructors at one of five regional training centers.

Facility assistance dogs are different from typical family pets in that CCI dogs are specifically training to work with a wide variety of people. Numerous studies have demonstrated benefits of therapy dogs for our students in particular. We recognize the role a dog will have in helping students build healthy attachments, increased verbal interactions, develop leisure/recreation skills, boost self-esteem, decrease anxiety, reduce loneliness, and improve attention skill. All of these components directly complement the objectives of our Social Emotional Curriculum that focuses on students, Executive Functioning, Competence, Cooperation, and Social/Relationship skills.

Little Keswick School is a Therapeutic Boarding School, which provides a structured environment to give children with emotional and self-regulation issues, language-based and non-verbal learning disabilities, ADHD or Asperger's and similar developmental disorders, opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive.