South Elementary and the Youth Mental Health Day Treatment Program will employ the use of a therapy dog to improve the resilience of our students. Some students have difficulty identifying their emotions, identifying the emotions of others, understanding social consequences for their actions and building relationships. A therapy dog can be used as a teaching tool for students to first identify these social and emotional competencies of the dog and then transition to identification in themselves and others. Our school counselor and our therapy dog will work to build the social and emotional competencies and the self-regulation strategies of our students.