Meet Millie, Cowles’ “Adjunct” Canine Counselor
Millie is a much-loved “staff member” at Cowles Montessori School.
She’s back!
If you look on the Cowles website staff directory you won’t find her listed there. After all, you wouldn’t be able to call her on the phone or get in touch via e-mail. No, she does her best work face-to-face. Usually she provides therapy for the students. But lately they’ve been therapy for her.
Millie, the adjunct counselor at the school, is only seven years old but she’s wise beyond her years. Her “boss,” Tracy Lepeltak, credits her with a sixth sense and then some and is just as glad as the kids at Cowles to have her back on the job after a spring break injury sidelined the pacific yellow pooch for about a month.
A squad of middle-schoolers has taken charge of Millie’s rehab since her return from serious leg surgery that resulted from an attack by another dog at a kennel where she boarded while Lepeltak was out of town. Talk about irony. It’s like the Dalai Lama getting mugged. Peace is a byword at Cowles and if peace grew four legs and a gently wagging tail it would be Millie. She’s absolutely unflappable. Except for her ears.
Lepeltak already had two dogs when her son and a girlfriend split up when Millie was almost a year old and had to find a new home for their shared puppy. She became dog #3. There was something special about her, that much was immediately clear. Lepeltak saw it in hospice visits to a loved one. She floated the idea of bringing Millie to work with her at a previous school and encountered some predictable and understandable resistance. But after specialized training was completed, Millie got her shot.
“One day I saw her do something truly amazing,” Lepeltak remembers. “There was a boy who was just out of control, shouting and trying to flee the building. Staff blocked all the exits but nobody, nothing could calm him down and physical intervention would have just escalated the situation. He started pacing angrily, back and forth. Millie fell in step with him, walking parallel, whatever pace he set. Finally he stopped and gently rubbed her ear. Then he said that he wanted to talk, but only to Millie.”
Surely she’s had some bad days, too, right? “Well, she got off to a rough start with Mr. Grylls, our new principal this year, when she snatched his lunch right off his desk on one of his first days, but other than that…”
Millie hasn’t had to defuse a scenario as volatile as the one previously described since the pair came to Cowles four years ago. But she displays a particularly magic touch with the preschoolers and kindergartners whose classrooms line the hall where Lepeltak’s office is strategically located.
“The little ones are prone to cry occasionally,” Lepeltak said. “When Millie hears that she grabs one of her toys (she has a surplus; kids bring them to her all the time) and takes it to the room and presents it to the child who’s upset. Usually the crying stops as soon as they see Millie.”
Besides toys, the kids bring Millie treats – lots of them. One day Lepeltak returned to her desk and found a plate of what she took to be cookies.
“There’s such an organic emphasis here, I figured they were some sort of granola goodie. I took a bite and it was terrible. Later a mother walked in to check and make sure that Millie got the biscuits she’d left for her.”
With the help of everyone who’s pitching in to repay the therapy that Millie’s dispensed to them the unofficial mascot is making slow but steady progress. But as anyone who’s ever needed a vet for their pet can attest, the surgery and post-op treatment haven’t come cheaply. That’s where the tightly knit Cowles community has rallied around its counseling staff. RAYGUN impresario Mike Draper is a Cowles parent and he designed a Millie t-shirt in collaboration with Principal Grylls and librarian Erin Fidler. All proceeds are going to defray Millie’s medical bills. At this writing more than a hundred have been sold.
“This gesture is so typical of Cowles,” Lepeltak said. “No one even told me they were planning this.”
Given the absence of crises at Cowles what does a typical day on the job for Millie entail? “Millie Time” can mean lots of things including reading to her, walking with her outside, using her as a model in art class or just dropping in for a quick pat and a cheer-up. She has free run of the premises with the key exception of the lunchroom where many of the tabletops are just the right height for a canine buffet. Oh, and any classrooms where there’s a dog allergy are also out of bounds.
Other than that she pretty much rules the place. Teacher’s pet? She’s everybody’s pet. When they set up a booth to get priceless photos taken with Millie for a buck or two at a school fun night event the line was $700 long! For all the ballyhoo about educational reform you can’t get any more thoroughly modern than ol’ Millie. She’s a good girl.
