MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Mark Herz of member station WSHU explains.
MARK HERZ: I'm in the main reading room of the Law Library at Yale Law School, and it's got this soaring huge vaulted ceiling with intricate stonework, stained glass windows and giant chandeliers hanging on chains. And I'm here with...
BLAIR KAUFFMAN: Blair Kauffman, the law librarian.
HERZ: And in addition to the million books that can be taken out, there's something else new here, right?
KAUFFMAN: Oh, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
KAUFFMAN: You're talking about our therapy dog.
HERZ: The man who pressed Monty into service at Yale is Julian Aiken, access librarian at the law school and...
JULIAN AIKEN: I'm also Mr. Monty's personal assistant.
HERZ: Aiken said the idea came to him one night at home.
AIKEN: Librarians should be allowed one potentially brilliant but spectacularly rummy idea every decade or so, and this was mine.
HERZ: Seth Wayne is a third year law student who signed up for one of the sessions.
SETH WAYNE: You want more treats, don't you? Those are yours.
HERZ: Wayne says law students like hard data.
WAYNE: And I think there's hard data available that dogs lower your blood pressure and make you more relaxed, just being around them on a daily - yeah, that experience just has a tendency to calm you down.
HERZ: Again, law librarian Blair Kauffman.
KAUFFMAN: When the idea for this therapy dog was tossed around, Susan Karpuk, who's our head of cataloging, said: I can catalog anything. I can catalog a dog.
HERZ: For NPR News, I'm Mark Herz in Connecticut.
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