On the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 15, students gathered in Tishman Commons for the WellNESSt Festival hosted by the Office of Student Wellness and Balance Health Educators. As advertised, “WellNESSt is a wellness fair that provides resources to support your well-NESSt: nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress resilience!” The festival featured many tables set up with information about the various resources that Wellesley College offers in these different areas. There were also activities like making your own trail mix while learning about the nutritional content of the different ingredients. A large draw for the festival was the advertised chocolate fondue, massages, raffles and the beloved therapy dogs.
The therapy dogs are from Certified Therapy Dog Inc., a non-profit organization that helps furry friends gain valuable training and volunteer experience. Rachel Robbins, “a certified professional dog trainer (CPDT-KA) and behavior consultant,” organizes opportunities for handlers to visit various locations like Wellesley College. She founded her own training company, Every Great Dog, based in Needham, Massachusetts and trains the therapy dogs through the Certified Therapy Dog Inc. program which is recommended by the American Kennel Club.
“We have a nice, close-knit community where the people get to know each other and the dogs get experience working around each other. We get to just spread love, warmth and joy!” Robbins had been a trainer for about 12 years when she met a therapy dog trainer.
“I never met an organization that does the therapy dog training along with allowing people to have access to visits and so I knew I needed to offer this to my network and my clients in my community.” She added in regards to one of the dogs, “Leo was one of our first ones that graduated from the program. See how they just love!” Leo, Ginger, Rue and Rupert were four of the therapy dogs bringing joy to students and helping with de-stressing.
When asked what her favorite part of the WellNESSt festival was, student Karen Xiao ’26 explained, “Probably the therapy dogs. You don’t really get the chance to pet dogs very much on campus and it is just so nice to be around very well-trained, cute, sweet dogs.”
Another student, Chae Won Yun ’26 agrees that being around therapy dogs has helped calm her down and helped with stress. “I feel very relaxed when I pet the dog. The dogs are very sweet and they are doing such a great job with the training. A lot of the dogs that I’ve met here are fairly young and you wouldn’t know it because they act very mature.”
Other activities included a questionnaire so students could learn about what well-NESSt habits they have and could incorporate into their daily lives such as aiming to eat different colored foods within a balanced diet and getting a full night of sleep. The Balance Health Educators, “a student organization promoting health and wellness,” were also there to answer questions and facilitate conversation with the student attendees. Tickets were provided once certain activities were completed at the various tables, and these tickets could be redeemed for massages or petting the therapy dogs. Tickets could also be used for various raffles that included an assortment of prizes. One opportunity to earn tickets was to answer questions about student life and play a game, run by Tara Hollis, director of Orientation and Transition Programs. The questions she asked also included important reminders like when the deadline to drop a course or change the grading basis is.
Overall, the WellNESSt Festival provided students with the opportunity to take a break from classes and to celebrate self-love and self-care. This was a chance for students to de-stress and celebrate themselves, especially on-theme for the day after Valentine’s Day.
