{"id":46263,"date":"2022-03-03T09:53:23","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T08:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.steinmuehle.de\/blog\/2022\/03\/03\/part-german-shepherd-part-meerkat-mara-becomes-a-school-dog\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T17:35:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T15:35:24","slug":"part-german-shepherd-part-meerkat-mara-becomes-a-school-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/blog\/2022\/03\/03\/part-german-shepherd-part-meerkat-mara-becomes-a-school-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"“Part German Shepherd, part meerkat”: Mara becomes a school dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mara is unfazed. Small children, crowds, all kinds of noises, a skateboard whizzing by, bicycles, or joggers\u2014nothing fazes her. The presence of teacher Mar\u00eda Ramos\u2019s dog is greeted with joy on the grounds of the Steinm\u00fchle. And soon, the four-legged friend starts stopping by Steinm\u00fchlenweg more often. <\/p>\n

Mara is actually Mar\u00eda Ramos\u2019s daughter\u2019s therapy dog. Her daughter wasn\u2019t able to bring Mara with her to her facility. Ramos: \u201cOne day I thought, \u2018We could do more with this animal\u2019s potential.\u2019 The school administration agreed with my idea of Mara becoming a school dog.\u201d First and foremost, a temperament test is required. \u201cMara passed that successfully,\u201d the teacher reports. Now Mara will undergo proper training. \u201cShe already knows all the commands.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mara\u2019s roots are in the Balkans. She arrived in her new home in Germany malnourished, frightened, and \u201cwith patches of light-colored fur.\u201d Mara spent her first six months on a farm with many children. This \u201ccross between a German Shepherd and a meerkat\u201d has been living with Mar\u00eda Ramos since December 2020. <\/p>\n

Those in charge are well aware that children will also need instructions on how to interact with the school dog. They also recognize that a school dog can help children cope with stress, promote their well-being, lift their spirits, and even improve their social skills. <\/p>\n

We’re very excited to see how things turn out and look forward to Mara’s return with her “diploma.” We’ll continue our animal-themed report in due course. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mara is unfazed. Small children, crowds, all kinds of noises, a skateboard whizzing by, bicycles, or joggers\u2014nothing fazes her. The presence of teacher Mar\u00eda Ramos\u2019s dog is greeted with joy on the grounds of the Steinm\u00fchle. And soon, the four-legged friend starts stopping by Steinm\u00fchlenweg more often. Mara is actually Mar\u00eda Ramos\u2019s daughter\u2019s therapy dog. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":46265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-social-engagement"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49305,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46263\/revisions\/49305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}