For the past five years Emma Thomas’ life has been surrounded with dogs that make both hers and others’ lives better. Thomas, along with her mother and sister, have been involved with training service dogs for the blind for 5 years now.  From now until the end of the school year, every odd Thursday and Friday Thomas will have the opportunity to bring seven month old service dog Cruiser to school.

Thomas had to go through meetings with the school district, Mrs. Debra Hawkins and Mrs. Jennifer Hanks to get permission to take Cruiser on campus for training.

“It’s been a process, but my mom and I went to a Rocklin [Unified] School District board meeting and I spoke to the board about bringing a service dog in training and they approved it right there, then once the year got started, we scheduled a meeting with Mrs. [Debra] Hawkins and Mrs. [Jennifer] Hanks and then went into the meeting to talk about what we were going do to inform the teachers so they emailed all the teachers and parents to make sure no one has allergies or anything,” Thomas said.

In class, there is always a possibility that Cruiser could start to freak out from either feeling threatened or smothered by students. Though Thomas is trained on how to handle and act in these situations, it can still disrupt lessons. Despite the possible situation, Thomas expressed that her teachers, especially her math teacher, Mr. Alex Anderson is still excited for the experience.

“In general I am a big dog lover. Cruiser is a very cute puppy and I’m excited to have him in class. Just having a dog in class brightens up my day as well as other students and I know that Emma will do a great job training that dog and it will live a very purposeful life once he is done being trained,” Anderson said.

Since Cruiser is a service dog in training and it is the first time a service dog has been on campus, students might not know that he isn’t treated the same way as a normal pet.

“I’m fine with people petting the dog, I just need them to ask first because I’ll need Cruiser to sit so people can come up to him and he doesn’t go up to the person. One of my pet peeves is when they don’t ask to pet my dog, it just drives me crazy,” Thomas said.

Thomas has also given her friends training on how to act around the dog.

“I’m really anticipating just seeing her guide dog in training and how he will adapt to the atmosphere of a lot of people and I love dogs so it’s just going to be really cool having one on campus too,” Camille Baldovino said.

If there are any questions, Thomas said she is open to answering them about Cruiser during break or lunch.

by LILY JONES