Cara Zelas on Integrating Therapy Dogs into Education

Sure. Hi. Thank you so much for having me here today. I’m so looking forward to sharing about Big World of Little Dude. So my name is Cara Zelas. I’m the founder of Big World of Little Dude, which is an educational platform, teaching young children, age three to seven, or that early childhood period, about social and emotional skills. So things like manners, empathy, respect, kindness, all those good foundational skills that you want your early learners to be building.

And we deliver our message through a book series, which can be used at home. And they’re part of also the Humankind Curriculum, which is a program that teachers can use in their classroom.

So Little Dude and I, you get images of Little Dude, but Little Dude is a therapy dog. And I got him trained when he was about one years old. And we trained through the Good Dog Foundation in New York City. I really wanted to do some volunteer work within my community. And someone suggested that I look into therapy because Little Dude was just such a chill puppy and he was so sweet and cute and he was like, could be a perfect candidate for being a dog, a therapy dog. And so we did the training and at the same time I was also teaching in an early childhood classroom. And my background is in education. So I have an elementary degree. I also have a media degree and I have a Montessori certification in early childhood education.

And so my experience volunteering really gave me this feeling of, it’s so important that exchange of kindness for both the receiver and the giver of the kindness and that a small act of kindness can have a big impact. And I wanted to teach that idea to the children in my early childhood classroom. So I asked the head of the school, if I can bring in little dude and share with my children or the children about dog therapy and why it’s important to be kind. And I really had an aha moment when little dude came into the classroom. The students were so engaged. They were curious. And those are both things that you want your kids to be because that’s when rich learning occurs, when they’re engaged and they’re curious. And I also saw an unmet need in the classroom.

For example, when we greeted each child when they came in in the morning, some kids wouldn’t acknowledge you, wouldn’t look you in the eye. And I was just thinking, why aren’t we teaching these skills in early childhood education? You know, we teach ABCs and one, two, threes in a really explicit way. Why aren’t we teaching communication skills explicitly or how to make a friend or what is kindness or what is empathy or teaching about accepting our similarities and differences within each other. And that led me down the path of exploring social and emotional learning. And that’s what inspired me to start writing a book series and lesson plans, teaching kids social and emotional skills in an explicit way. So Little Dude, Little Dude was really the inspiration.

two target audience. One is parents of young children in that sort of, you know, parenting stage of late twenties to early forties. So that’s one target audience. And my other target audience is school librarians, teachers, school administrators. So I kind of have two markets that I am serving.

Sure, I think my origin story makes it different. Like, that it came from really organic roots of my own personal experience of being kind to others in my community and the fact that it’s based on a real life dog and that if I do lessons or readings, he comes with the lessons.

And I’m also a dog therapy advocate for bringing dogs into the classroom to help with emotional wellbeing. And I think that’s a point of difference to my program. So my program stands alone without the dog therapy, but then there’s just an added element of difference with using dog therapy in the classroom and trying to advocate for bringing dogs into classrooms.

I would love to just continue to grow it and to see it used in lot of classrooms. I am just done a website refresh, which is almost in the completion phase. So hopefully in the next few weeks, I’ll have an updated website with a better messaging and clearer messaging about who I am and what I, my products that I have to help parents and teachers.

And then I just finished writing the Humankind Curriculum, which is a literacy -based SEL program or social and emotional learning program written by teachers that teachers can use in the classroom. And that can be used in homeschools, afterschool programs, libraries, and in schools. So I just want to grow that and get traction on that. And I would love to also work on my social media. I think that’s another avenue to build my community.

Right now, I would say it’s my book series. So that’s like the best selling products at the moment.

Yeah, I I think that being an entrepreneur, like no one teaches you how to be an entrepreneur. It’s something that you just are driven to do. And then for me personally, it was like a lot of learning as I was going, you know, I was a classroom teacher. So everything that I’ve learned up until now, I’ve learned on the go. So for example,

Even just networking, if you don’t know how to network, it’s something that you have to actively seek out and do and practise. Just like with everything that you do in business, some things come more naturally than others. So I like to be challenged and to get out of my comfort zone and being an entrepreneur, you definitely face all those things. But basically I think my biggest challenge is that I am a one woman show. So I wear all the hats and I think that kind of harbours my acceleration of growth because I have to do everything. And I think if I had a team around me, my growth would be accelerated.

Yeah, I would say social and emotional mean, social and sorry. I would say social media. So growing my community on Instagram. I think LinkedIn is another great marketing tool, especially if you’re, I think that’s another great avenue. And then I’m starting to now getting into email marketing too. And I think that’s also a great area for growth.

I would like parents to know that they’re not alone in their parenting journey. I think being a parent in this day and age is really difficult. We’ve got so many challenges presented to us. You know, we’re busy ourselves. We’ve got full time, you know, we’re working. Our kids face different challenges than when we grow up with technology. There’s just so many more demands on parents. And so I think that just letting parents know that they’re not alone, that there’s so many resources out there to help guide them into making good parenting choices, especially for early childhood learners.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is great.