Evans City service dog, owner graduate from Lincoln Park
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Hickory the yellow Labrador is showing that man’s best friend can have a lasting impact on the academic world.
The 6-year-old service dog and his owner, Emma Sciullo, of Evans City, walked across the stage at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School commencement ceremony June 11.
Emma attended the school in Midland, Pa., for six years, graduating with a degree in media arts. She and Hickory attended school together beginning in her junior year, according to Wendy, Emma’s mom.
“We started breeding dogs in 2016, when Emma was in sixth grade. She was diagnosed with high-functioning autism and anxiety at that time,” she said. “We began training dogs, and using (Hickory) to help mitigate her autism and anxiety attacks.”
Emma said the amount of training required of a service dog is what sets them apart from therapy or emotional support dogs, and that Hickory provides stability.
“He adds a sense of familiarity for my life. He’s an anchor for situations where I don’t know what’s going on and I’m anxious,” she said. “If I’m freaking out, he’ll actually drag me away from a situation and make me calm down. I was getting panicked in an airport line one time, and he actually pulled me out of line.”
Wendy said when Lincoln Park opened after the peak of the pandemic, administration welcomed Hickory’s attendance.
“The school is just amazing,” she said. “The longer (Hickory and Emma) worked together, the closer they got. They’d never worked with a service dog before and were amazed at the change in Emma using the dog as a tool to help her.”
“People were really excited to have him,” Emma said. “People light up when he’d come to school every day.”
Hickory is described as dependable, loyal and loving, and much more than a service dog.
“He’s very mellow, very sweet, attentive, and also a sleeper,” Emma said. “When I’m working on something in class, that man is down for the count.”
“(Hickory and Emma) have been to nationals for dock diving. They love to swim together,” Wendy said. “Service dogs can be fun too.”
The pair rode the bus to school until November 2021, after a Lincoln Park bus was involved in a fatal accident on Interstate 79. Though Hickory and Emma were not involved, Wendy said one of Emma’s friends was in the hospital with injuries as a result.
“We took Hickory to the hospital to visit her,” she said. “I told Emma, ‘I know he’s your service dog, but it may be good to share him with everybody else.’”
The day after the accident, Emma took Hickory to see members of administration and offered emotional support to her classmates.
“The school just loved him,” Wendy said. “It was such a positive experience. Parents came up to me and said ‘My kid had such a hard senior year, and even if they couldn’t touch (Hickory) just seeing him, their faces would light up.’”
Emma said her teachers and classmates appreciated Hickory as much as she did.
“Hickory, because he’s a service dog, he has a lot of tags. My mom got him a tag muffler so he wouldn’t jingle,” she said. “When I put it on, all the teachers said, ‘I didn’t hear him coming in.’ I told them I put on the muffler and they said, ‘I like hearing him walk down the hall!’ Just hearing him jingle across the hall was the best part of their day.”
When graduation came along, Hickory matched graduates in his own cap.
“The cap was given to me by the office ladies (at school). I sewed a thing of elastic on, and got him to wear it 15 minutes a day to get him used to it,” she said. “It stayed on, which was a win.”
Hickory walked across the stage with Emma, shaking “paws” with CEO P.K. Poling. The pair was also featured during a Class of 2022 video. When they graced the screen, everyone applauded.
“After the two of us walked, he could tell I was getting anxious and he got on the theater seat and hugged me,” she said. “He was practically sitting on me, it was pretty funny.”
Emma and Hickory will remain inseparable, as Emma begins classes at Edinboro University in August to study animation.
“I guess it’s going to be a new kind of freedom for the two of us,” she said. “I think it will be something we both like. I’m excited because he’s never seen a big snow before, I love how he’s going to react to all that snow in Erie.”
