Every Wednesday, students at Livingston High School drop what they're doing, get down on the floor, and crowd around a Great Pyrenees, golden retriever and Labrador mix named Georgia. It's become the highlight of the week for kids who otherwise can't look up from their screens.

"Kids actually put their phones down. I mean, it is not easy to compete with the phones but Georgia gets it done," said handler Pamela Vandenberg-Smith, a Livingston resident who dedicates five hours a week to the volunteer program on top of working full-time as a realtor.

In January 2024, Vandenberg-Smith attended a parent-teacher meeting at Heritage Middle School for her son Christopher, who has autism. Christopher talked about Georgia so often that his teacher suggested bringing the dog to class — a suggestion that sent Vandenberg-Smith straight into the Alliance of Therapy Dogs certification process, which requires a background check, a handling assessment, and several supervised observations before a team gets approved. Georgia passed easily. "She didn't need much training because she was always really good at it," Vandenberg-Smith said.

Over roughly two years, that single classroom goal grew into weekly visits across Livingston High School and Riker Hill Elementary. At the high school, Georgia arrives Wednesdays during "Lancer Time," a built-in break period, where small groups of four or five students rotate through — though Vandenberg-Smith said as many as 20 kids sometimes crowd around at once, all talking over each other. Georgia doesn't flinch. At Riker Hill, visits look different: about 10 minutes in five or six classrooms per session. Students recently sang "Happy Birthday" to Georgia for her 11th.

Vandenberg-Smith's older son Thomas, a junior at Livingston High School, became a certified junior handler so he could join the visits himself. Georgia has since made appearances at school events like Teacher Appreciation Day and Bring Your Kid to Work Day, where she's become something of a local celebrity.

Vandenberg-Smith eventually brought Georgia to Christopher's special education classroom — the moment that started it all. "Truthfully, the visit to his class went okay. It was my big goal," she said. "But all the other visits that I've had have been even more meaningful and exciting."

Livingston Public Schools has long hosted therapy dog and Seeing Eye dog programs, with district officials calling them vital tools for teaching students about differences and everyday kindness. Vandenberg-Smith plans to keep Georgia's visits going through the 2026-2027 school year.