I showed up to cover an event for Over The Edge. Camera rolling, questions ready, full journalist mode activated. I had a plan.
And then I saw the dog.
Nessie is a Golden Retriever, and if you’ve ever been around a Golden, you already know where this is going. She was soft, calm, and completely unbothered by the stream of students stopping to crouch down and say hi to her. No anxiety, no chaos, just a very good dog doing her job and doing it well.
She was on campus as part of a therapy dog visit, and the timing honestly couldn’t have been better. We’re all familiar with what mid-semester feels like. Deadlines start stacking, the library gets louder, and somewhere between your third coffee and your second all-nighter you start forgetting what it feels like to just… breathe. Enter Nessie.
My original plan was straightforward, talk to the handler, grab some footage for OTE’s Instagram, wrap it up. I think I lasted about thirty seconds before I was on the floor petting her. The handler was genuinely great to talk to and clearly passionate about what they do, but Nessie had already stolen the whole show before the interview even started.
What I liked most about the event was how low-pressure it felt. There was a steady flow of people coming through, not overwhelming, not empty, just a natural, easy kind of energy. People would walk in, immediately clock the golden retriever, and you could actually see their whole face change. That’s not something you can fake.
It’s easy to dismiss these kinds of events as small or optional, the kind of thing you scroll past on a campus calendar. But there’s something about being around an animal that just cuts through everything. No small talk required. No performance. You just sit there and pet the dog and for a few minutes, nothing else is really that serious.
I went there to do a job and I definitely did it, eventually! But I also ended up having one of the most genuinely relaxed afternoons I’ve had in a while on campus, and that felt worth writing about.
If you missed Nessie’s visit, keep an eye on the OTE event calendar at overtheedge.unbc.ca/calendar. And if you ever see a therapy dog event pop up, just go. Trust me on this one.
