In addition to my regular work, I have a second job as a driver and escort: Several times a month I drive Riley, my Finnish Spitz mix, to her gigs as a therapy dog.
Riley has been a therapy dog in the organization PET for almost two years. The organization was founded in 2013 with two goals: to improve the plight of homeless dogs in Russia and to train former strays to visit anyone who needs the therapeutic effect of a calm, loving animal. Over the months our programs have grown, and now every week our nearly 30 teams visit dozens of hospices, orphanages, schools and boarding schools, retirement homes, and even libraries, where our dogs listen to children reading aloud.
But until a sunny morning in early June, we'd never been to a five-star hotel before. The Renaissance Moscow Monarch Center Hotel invited four fur therapists to join them at their "Sea in the City" event. It was a day of activities, entertainment, great food, and music for about 30 children from the Seltsovsky boarding school in the Bryansk region — kids the hotel has been fostering for many years.? The hotel staff, together with their friends at the charity To Children with Love and the English Nursery & Primary School, had a full day planned for the children ?€” and not just the kids from Bryansk, but kids from Moscow who came with their parents to take part in the fun.
And it was a lot of fun. The kids learned yoga and acrobatics and flower arranging. They did cartwheels across the carpet, made music in a jam session, and learned how to dance. For a change of pace, girls learned self-defense karate and boys learned some basic skills in housekeeping and cooking. The hotel staff introduced the older kids to various professions in the hospitality business, like being a housekeeper, a chef, or a waiter. The little kids played with the toys and folks from the English Nursery & Primary School.
Our dogs ?€” Riley, Trisha, Pronya, and Gulya ?€” first met the kids outside where there was room to show some of our tricks. Then we moved inside where the kids, who were dashing around between master classes and activities, found time to stop to pet the endlessly patient Trisha, take Pronya for a walk around the floor, watch Gulya do her spectacular dance routine, or turn themselves into human pyramids to see how many of them Riley could jump over. Or sometimes they just stopped to hug and pet the dogs, which is really what they are there for.
Just before a truly lavish dinner was about to be served, a dozen kids hoisted up a 15-foot-long Chinese dragon on poles and propelled their green monster through the crowds. Pronya, the sole male dog in our group, decided to defend us and tried to bark the monster into submission. At that point, we decided to leave the kids and let them enjoy the rest of the day.
But we didn't go home. We all sat outside the hotel in the sun, basking not only in the sunshine, but the extraordinary kindness and generosity of the people we'd just met.