Milly is smiling. It's her first day back to school in a year, as pandemic rules on guest visitors now ease.
She puts her paws up on the front desk of Kotara High, to a chorus of cooing. There's time for a quick belly rub before she is on her way to class, via a bush that has caught the attention of her nose.
"Milly loves finding food scraps in the playground," Trish Carlier says.
Trish and husband Ralph breed pale-haired golden retrievers, and after retiring from teaching, have become qualified Delta Therapy Dog volunteers. Four of their dogs, who they raised from pups - Milly, Ruby, Abby and Misty (who just turned 13 years old and is about to stop working) - have become "Delta Dogs".
The three younger "girls", as Trish and Ralph fondly call them, all had pups last year. Their Speers Point home was overrun with fluffiness.
The couple have kept one of the pups, Lucy, who is almost a year old now and in training to join the volunteer work that the family does around Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, visiting special learning units in schools, children's hospital wards, aged care centres, a rehabilitation centre for people recovering from serious injury and illness, and the Nexus unit at John Hunter Children's Hospital, which is an inpatient child and adolescent mental health service.
Lucy has until she is three to complete training, as Trish "watches her signs". Reduced socialising opportunities during lockdowns changed the usual acclimatisation phase.
The Carliers first Delta Dog was Jazzy, who passed away two years ago. Jazzy's ability to sense people's needs was an eye-opener to the abilities of dogs, which seem to transcend the human way of knowing.
Visiting stroke victims, "she instinctively knew to go to the side that worked", Trish says. "She'd place herself so they only had to move their hand down a little bit to put it on top of her head. I don't know how she knew to do that."
The Carlier dogs all have their own way, with Milly "so calm", and a natural with the camera. "Milly loves posing!"
During lockdown the support class students had Zoom meets with her.
They were popular online schooling sessions, says teacher Kristi Devetak, who heads the school's support learning unit.
"Often all the puppies were there," Devetak says. "The kids loved it, couldn't stop talking."
Talking can be difficult for students with autism. They have a double desk space, and there are few students to a room.
"That personal space they seek at other times, they're happy to forgo that to be next to Milly," Devetak says.
"One of my students says 'I don't know how to have a conversation with someone', but when they sit down and they're patting Milly some of those guards and barriers come down, they're just chatting about the dog.
"That has led to some friendships. There's something that they have in common, they all enjoy that time when Milly's here."
This is particularly important for Year 7 newcomers. Many students in the Kotara High support classes were meeting Milly for the first time when she returned earlier this month, accompanied by photographer Simone De Peak who documented that much anticipated day.
Milly works her way around students in the four support classes at the school. Nobody escapes her attention, yet she seem to know when "now is not a good time".
When it feels right, Milly climbs onto chairs besides students, receives hugs, shakes paw/hand and sniffs their bags ("food!"). One student hands Trish a drawing, it's a picture of Milly.
Milly's visits offer a "a little bit of a sigh of relief", Devetak says. "The mood of my room changes. I think they just feel comfortable, there's no pressure, I think that's perhaps it. It's hard for me to pinpoint, I just know it's been a real success.
"One boy would have his head on the desk and be really quite difficult to engage, but as soon as Milly came in he was up and patting Milly. His mood really lifted for the rest of the day."
Another student Devetak mentions was a "very self-conscious" reader when he started at the school in Year 7. He would sit with one hand on Milly, the other holding a book, and read to her - "which was just wonderful because he didn't want to read in front of an anyone, it started to build his self-esteem."
"It was certainly the icebreaker that got him that little bit of confidence," she says. "There was no pressure."
While Milly only officially visits support classes at Kotara High, "Trish always hangs around at recess and gets swamped," Devetak says.
It's the same at hospitals, where a Delta Dog visit is vital not just for patients. It's also a moment welcomed by staff and visiting families.
As president of the local Junior Doctors Association in 2019, Melanie Nardi organised a Delta Dog visit, for Doctor's Day - "a day which focuses on the wellbeing of our junior doctors".
Delta Dogs visited doctors in their offices, tagged along when they went to wards and joined them in their lounge area.
"It was a lot of fun and really uplifting," Nardi says. "We're so busy sometimes that we wouldn't even get to go outside."
She says many junior doctors are away from their support structure, as they travel on regional secondments, and many are missing their own dog besties.
While working as a paediatric trainee, Nardi has often seen Delta Dogs making their visits. "They're there for the patients, but we get to have that little moment as well," she says.
"They're just so gorgeous and adorable, it brings a smile to our faces."
For child patients, the dogs are "a very familiar presence in a very unfamiliar place".
"It's something to look forward to, to motivate them - 'Oh wow, there's a dog!' - especially if they don't feel like getting out of bed," Nardi says.
"For sick children, when they're surrounded by an unfamiliar environment it can be very scary if they have got lines and tubes connected and lots of machines beeping.
"They forget about 'I'm in hospital'... 'I'm in hospital for this reason', it definitely improves wellbeing which all contributes to overall healing."
Naomi Tranter organises Delta Dog visits at John Hunter Children's Hospital. Ralph Carlier takes Abby there now, accompanied by Misty to show her the ways.
The dogs usually go to all of the children's wards, including the NICU, the neo-natal intensive care unit for sick and premature-birthed babies, where they offer "some relief" to parents.
After a visit, Tranter says, "there's just a little bit less stress in the atmosphere".
In the wards the dogs can be especially welcome for children who "are a long, long way from home". Some young patients come off farms where they are used to working dogs.
"Because a lot of them do come from rural areas, it's important that they have something here that reminds them of home," she says.
For children who have long-term stays, Delta Dogs are "almost like a family member visiting".
"It's very challenging for a child, everything that they know has changed," Tranter says. "It's much easier when you're an adult to justify it in your mind, 'I've got to do this because it will help me'.
"We can often go into a room when a child is quite distressed, they'll see the dog and they instantly stop crying."
Some children stop speaking during hospital stays - "they're very frightened and won't speak to anyone, but will speak to a dog".
"It's quite a special moment when that happens, it's really quite extraordinary," Tranter says.
Tranter coordinates where the precious time of Delta Dogs visits is best used, including working one-on-one with children undertaking physical therapy, such as learning to walk up stairs again.
"The dog went up and down the stairs with them," she says.
"It's that simple, that little diversion from what's actually happening, is all you need to take the next step, it just takes the pressure off for a moment."
Ralph and Misty have been going to the Nexus unit for some years now, mostly spending time with teenagers. Some of the patients are on 24-hour watch.
"The dogs give them an avenue to communicate," Ralph says.
Sometimes this creates a conduit between a teenage patient and their parent, who they may not have had contact with for weeks. And it is often a moment for medical staff to glean insights into closed-off thoughts of patients.
The Delta Dogs are an initiative of the Delta Society Australia, stemming from a belief in the "human-animal bond". Research indicates that therapy dogs can reduce stress cortisol levels, and increase "attachment responses" that trigger oxytocin - otherwise known as the "Love Hormone". The dogs also feel the same benefits, studies have shown.
While the society helps train new recruits, it says "generally speaking Therapy Dogs are born and not made". As are the people who come with them.
"The dog is the star of the show," Tranter says. "Everyone wants to know the dog's name. I find the volunteers who do this role are very humble that way."
