THERE WILL BE MORE PICTURES. The dogs are coming back.

The Animal Assisted Crisis Response team will be at NIU Feb. 10-16 and will be visiting various spots during that time, including at events on Feb. 14.

Elizabeth Garcia, counselor for the Counseling and Student Development Center, said the organization is based on volunteers that provide comfort and emotional rescue for those in need of healing. The dogs came to visit last year in response to Feb. 14.

Garcia received positive feedback from students and faculty about the dogs, and how they wanted them to come back.

“The dogs provide a normalcy,” Garcia said. “Kids would hug and play with them, and it gave them a reason to laugh.”

Some of the dog teams returned to DeKalb about the same time as our commemoration of Virginia Tech's bad day in April. By then the weather was good enough for the preschool kids to go for a walk, and the little kids and the dogs helped cheer me up.