02 Aug 2022 Archie supports new educators who need help with their conduct

By Becky Bell

Archibald Ford is technically a standard poodle, but as far as what his role will be with the teachers in school districts he is beginning to serve, he is anything but typical.

Bethany Hill, Archibald’s handler, says most people know her dog as Archie, and even though he is still a growing 40-pound puppy, he is already making an impression on those he has encountered as an up-and-coming service dog for teachers.

Hill is a Retention and Recruitment Specialist for the Arch Ford Education Service Cooperative, which includes 27 districts in Central Arkansas, River Valley, and North Little Rock.

Part of her job involves collaborating with new teachers to make sure they have what they need for success in the first three years of their career, including more professional development. The idea to get a dog, who ended up being Archie, was sparked when Hill and her team reviewed new teachers’ progress about six weeks into school. What they found were teachers who needed support.

“We were overwhelmed by the amount of stress and worry and where they were in their first few weeks of school,” Hill said. “But that is the state of education right now with kids and educators.”

So, the group began brainstorming and found an idea they all liked.

“We said wouldn’t it be great to have a dog at work, so we can pet it when we were stressed,” Hill said. “We had played with the idea in the past, but we started looking deeply into it. Maybe there were grants out there. Buying the dog was our biggest concern.”

But before they could research how the dog would be paid for, they had to first get it approved by the main administrator. Hill said he took four days to consider it and then came back with a resounding yes.

The educators decided that a poodle would be the best to consider because it would be the most hypoallergenic and they have hair, not fur, so shedding would not be a problem.

Hill had a friend who is a breeder of poodles and doodles and has a business called Copperhead Puppies in Austin, Ark. When her friend heard about the group’s intent to make a poodle a source of support for educators, she donated the dog to Hill with her best wishes for the project.

Archie was 8 weeks old when he was picked up around Christmas, and Hill’s family fell in instant love with him, as well as all the schools in the Arch Ford Education Service Cooperative who got to meet Archie on Facebook Live. Well, OK, technically, not everyone in Hill’s family was an instant fan of Archie.

“We have a Yorkie named Baxter who is 9 years old, and we have a rescue we adopted named Zoey. She is a boxer pointer mix. So those are Archie’s siblings,” Hill said. “At first it was a big transition because Baxter was extremely comfortable being one of the only two dogs in the house. And he was grumpy because he is the alpha. He is the littlest, but he has the biggest bark.”

But eventually, Baxter realized Archie was in fact his sibling and accepted him.

Archie’s training as an emotional support dog is ongoing, but his initial training began when he was only 11 weeks old. He began with obedience training for puppies, which included learning how to sit and lie down and to walk on a leash. Next, he went into canine good citizen training where he learned social graces in public, Hill said.

Now he is in public access training, where he will learn how to go into restaurants and stores and learn how to remain patient while Hill shops or when he is around food.

He will then move into educational dog training in which he will become acclimated to the sounds of schools, such as the buses and the bells. The purpose of this training will be to make him feel comfortable on his visits to schools.

Though his training is not complete, Archie has already made an impression when meeting teachers and some older students in special activities. And as far as Hill knows, there are few emotional support dogs out there for teachers, so he is unique.

“It’s really neat to see how he changes the mood in the room,” Hill said. “It’s neat to see how people melt when they are around him. Teachers want to get on the floor and cuddle with him. And he has the kind of sense about him that a lot of dogs do as he almost knows who needs him.”