As Dice Retires, Pentucket Regional High School Plans to Recruit New Service Dogs

Merrimack Valley Newsmakers

A retirement is on the horizon one of the beloved members of the Pentucket Regional High School staff, who offers comfort to both students and staff.

Pentucket Regional School Superintendent Justin Bartholomew, a recent guest on WHAV’s “Win for Breakfast” program, talked about the service dog named Dice, who is coming up on his 10th birthday.

“That is about the age when you retire a service animal from a public space like this, so we have spent, at the end of last year and this summer, we have spent quite a bit of time trying to determine how do we replicate what Dice has brought to the students, what Dice has brought to the adults in that building as well,” Bartholomew says.

Dice is a black lab that started going to Pentucket Regional High School in 2018.

“Dice was originally—we have one of our teachers, Pam Shedd, her daughter had diabetes and because of certain situations, her daughter couldn’t have a pump. So she looked into it and Dice was actually an alert animal, a medical assistance animal where Dice would alert the daughter to any diabetic stress,” he explains.

Bartholomew says Dice has been a calming influence for both students and adults, and school officials want to keep that going, by working with a group in Concordia, Kansas.

“We, and the School Committee, and certainly Pam and I, are spearheading Dice’s replacement. You can’t replace one with one. We are actually going to get five service animals, five dogs, with this partnership we have with this group in Kansas, and this is going to be a great opportunity for each school building to have a dog like Dice,” he says.

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