New facility dog Aiden is bringing smiles and support

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campus experience 1:41 New facility dog Aiden is bringing smiles and support

By:

Evan Musgrave

7 May 2025 221

This spring, the School of Design welcomed Aiden to its advising team. A trained facility dog, Aiden is partnering with Academic Advisor Michelle Flinchum to provide comfort and emotional support for students during advising sessions and in the studio environment. “Aiden is a highly trained superhero who comes in a fur coat and doesn’t shy away when a gaggle of 20 students surround him to give him love,” said Flinchum.

My name is Michelle Flincham. I'm an academic advisor for the School of Design. You'll see me around campus walking between our studios, and I'm pretty easy to recognize because I have my sidekick, AV with me. AV is a 2-year-old yellow lab from Service dogs in Virginia. He has been trained to be a facility dog and is working with me supporting our students here in the school design. What AV can do is support students with just general well being, bringing them comfort, joy. He's pretty incredible. He has a whole suitcase full of cues that can help support our students in a variety of ways. Every single morning walking to campus, we're just walking by and the amount of students that don't stop to even touch him, but they'll be listening to their headphones and they look up and they see him and you see the little smile that just kind of warms their face. That to me is the best part because he's starting not just my day off better, he's starting off everybody's day off better. It's really, really cool to see.

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