Events

For more details about any of the following events or activities, please see our About page.

Hangout

Our goal is to have at least one team on campus for about an hour and a half every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Friday when whether and volunteer capacity permits. Because wet dogs aren’t nearly as much fun plus they really don’t smell great. When we are on campus for a stroll during the week, one team is always at “Blue’s Corner” and on the weekends our primary location is the “Pit”. Our social media is updated with the times and names of the scheduled pup(s) before each hangout. Our social media accounts – Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit in r/HAPPEE_HugsandPups – are linked on the bottom right of our website pages.

Here are some pictures from our time on campus.

Painting Rocks

Another way we scatter love is by painting rocks with positive and inspirational messages to leave around campus to be found by students. Volunteers can paint rocks at home or in a group and then put them around campus by themselves or another volunteer can collect them and “hide” them around campus. Spoiler: we don’t “hide” them very well. 😉

Special Events

We partner with other community and student groups whenever possible, to better serve the UNC-Chapel Hill community. During the 2022-2023 school year, we held a party for our first birthday – in response to student request – as well as several “stations activities” such as writing thank you cards (“Who Makes You HAPPEE?”) that we paid postage for and mailed on their behalf and allowing students to paint rocks themselves, to keep, give away, “hide” around campus, or leave with us to hide (“You Rock!”). Our purpose in all of our Special Events is to provide opportunities for students to do something fun and meaningful and in doing so, build a student community to promote mental wellness even when we aren’t around with our Hugs and Pups. Sometimes they even learn something that will support their mental health, such as a new strategy to fight depression or anxiety.

We often partner with student and community organizations. In the past, we’ve partnered with: Healthy Heels, Paws with a Cause (a/k/a Helping Paws), UNC-CH Mental Health Ambassadors, Active Minds at Carolina, Arts Everywhere, the International Student Center, CUAB, UNC’s Walk.Support.Glow, and various UNC schools, dorms, and Greek organizations.