September Pub Talk
Science Pub: “Petting Piper… Sit, Spit and Chill”
Sept 16th, 2025 | 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Sip your favorite brew, while you learn a thing or two! Science Pub is an opportunity to enjoy learning about interesting topics in an informal atmosphere. Just bring your curiosity and a thirst to learn!
There are 2 ways to be at this event:
- In Person – Paradise Creek Brewery will be seating indoors at 100% capacity and the pub talk will be broadcast/projected on a the large projection screen in the pub/restaurant area.
- Via Zoom – Register for Zoom link HERE. Place a food/drink order for pick up at Paradise Creek Brewery’s Downtown Restaurant – 245 SE Paradise St, Pullman. Local delivery is also available. Tip: Place your order early so it’s ready by Pub talk time.
See the Facebook event HERE
This month’s speakers:
Join Patricia Pendry and Kathleen Rogers on September 16th for their pub talk, “Petting Piper… Sit, Spit and Chill“.
There has been a significant increase in use and popularity of animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) in a variety of settings, including hospitals, long-term care facilities, prisons, schools and universities. Participants, providers, and the media propagate enthusiastic narratives promoting AAIs as delivering powerful benefits across multiple aspects of human functioning and well-being. A consistent narrative in these accounts is that interactions with animals significantly alleviate human stress and promote relaxation. Interested in quantifying and unpacking these proclaimed effects, this presentation will explore if and how interactions with dogs may ‘get under the skin’ by sharing results from several WSU-based studies focused on measuring stress hormones – cortisol – from saliva in the context of these interactions. We will take a look at the data and provide ‘Pawsitive’ hands-on interactions with an experienced therapy-dog team to demonstrate our approach.
Dr. Patricia Pendry is a Professor of Human Development, Graduate faculty member in the Prevention Science Program at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. She is the former President of the International Society of Anthrozoology (ISAZ), a society that brings together researchers studying human -animal interaction, which is the focus of her research. She conducts randomized controlled trials in real-life settings to determine the effects of animal assisted interventions with horses, dogs and cats on children, adolescents and young adults’ stress-hormone functioning. She does this by measuring cortisol levels collected from thousands of samples of saliva in the context of interacting with animals. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Research Methods, Stress and Coping, Child Development, Program Evaluation and Policy Issues in Human Development. She is a life-long equestrian and shares her home with dogs, cats and chickens.
Dr. Kathleen Rodgers (Ph.D. 1993, Child and Family Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Human Development at Washington State University. Her research has examined violence and poverty as risk factors that contribute to sexual risk taking among adolescents, mother-daughter communication about sexuality, and the role of media in shaping adolescent and emerging adults’ attitudes about dating violence, sexual stereotypes, objectification of women, and acceptance of sexual harassment. Current research explores parent-adolescent communication about romantic relationships and dating violence to identify factors and strategies that best facilitate communication between parents and teens about healthy and unhealthy relationships. Rodgers’ research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, the Journal of Research on Adolescence, Journal of Health Communication, and Psychology of Popular Media Culture.