Our School Dog - Vinnie 

We are very excited to introduce you all to our school Nurture dog Vinnie. Vinnie is a red Cockapoo who is nearly 8 weeks old. He lives with Mrs Wells and her family but is very excited to be joining us at Watling Street as our school Nurture dog on Monday 20th October 2025.  Cockapoo’s are hypoallergenic and have low-shedding coats, which is important for children who have allergies, and their friendly disposition and eagerness to please make them easy to train. Cockapoos are also widely used in the field of therapy as they are by nature intelligent, gentle, and sociable and have been successfully supporting children in other schools.

Welcoming Vinnie into our school is not something we have approached lightly. For the sake of the children and adults in the school as well as for Vinnie, we have taken lots of advice from other settings who have school dogs, as well as ensuring our health and safety plan and documentation are correct. This includes our risk assessments, insurance, planning his training, dog toileting and students’ allergies.

The children will never be left alone with our school dog Vinnie, and through assemblies and class-based lessons over the coming weeks, they will all be taught how to safely be around him before they have the opportunity to meet him.   

For the next few months, Vinnie will not work directly with any pupils and there will never be any expectation for them to interact with him when he does start working with them.  For the rest of 2025, he will spend his time getting used to school, mainly in his three allocated spaces – Mrs Probert’s office, Mrs Well’s office and the library. When Vinnie does begin to move around the building, he will always be on a lead and always accompanied by a member of staff.   

Our long-term goal is for Vinnie to become a trained therapy and reading dog. Of course, this type of training will take time. The children will be then be able to spend time with Vinnie, reading to him and eventually taking him for walks using our local visits consent forms.

We are very mindful that introducing our new Nurture dog into school may be a big change for some of our pupils. As we shared above, no child will have to interact or be around Vinnie if they do not want to. We are also aware that some pupils might be allergic to dog hair. For this reason, before Vinnie arrives in school, we are asking families to complete the consent form below and return it to school.