The golden retriever who sat through two years of law school

Doges Editorial · 2026-06-10 · 5 min read

When Rebekah Arwood walked across the stage at UMKC's law school graduation, her service dog Nugget was right beside her — diploma and all. What it took to get there is a story about invisible disabilities, relentless training, and a dog who became the heart of the building.

One afternoon in the summer of 2023, Rebekah Arwood found herself standing on a Kansas City sidewalk, talking to a stranger and holding a golden retriever puppy she had not planned to own. She had gone out to buy shoes. The stranger was selling puppies from the side of the road. "You have to stop and say hi to puppies," Arwood said later, "and so I did. I fell in love with Nugget, and that day I took him home." As reported by UMKC Today, she had no idea, then, that Nugget would eventually sit through Criminal Procedure, Federal Taxation, and Missouri Civil Procedure — or that he would walk the stage at commencement in May 2026 to receive his own degree: a "juris dogtorate," signed in paw prints, from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

What law school feels like when you're carrying an invisible weight

Arwood completed her first year of law school without Nugget. She describes it as a year of white-knuckling through. The high-pressure environment — the Socratic cold calls, the ranked curves, the isolation from her support system and from the other dogs she'd left at home — sent her anxiety and depression, conditions she had managed since high school, into a sustained spiral.

"I was secluded from nearly all of my support system," Arwood said. "Every time I returned home, it was like I felt rejuvenated. I felt refreshed. I felt like the weight, to a degree, had been lifted." She knew what that weight was. And she knew what she needed.

Six to eight hours a day, for a month

That summer, Arwood worked with a company called Dog Training Elite to get Nugget certified as a psychiatric service dog. More than 61 million Americans live with some form of disability, but fewer than one percent are paired with service dogs. A professionally trained dog from an accredited organization costs between $15,000 and $50,000; the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners recommends a minimum of 120 hours of in-home training and 30 hours of public-access work before a dog is considered ready for daily deployment. Arwood didn't have that kind of time or money.

What she had was her own dog, a local trainer to get her started, and an entire summer. She and Nugget trained together six to eight hours a day for roughly a month. The goal was for Nugget to recognize the specific signals of Arwood's anxiety and dissociation — changes in her breathing, her posture, her stillness — and respond by placing himself between her legs or sitting on her feet, his weight against her, giving her something warm and present to anchor to.

What Nugget does in those moments has a clinical name: deep pressure therapy (DPT), a formally recognized psychiatric service dog task. The dog's body weight activates the handler's proprioceptive system, shifting the nervous system from fight-or-flight toward a calmer state — the same physiological mechanism that underlies weighted blankets used in anxiety treatment. A 2024 study in JAMA Network Open, described as the largest national randomized trial of psychiatric service dogs to date and funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that veterans paired with trained service dogs had 66% lower odds of a PTSD diagnosis compared to those on a waiting list, and measurably lower salivary cortisol throughout the day. (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.14686)

One very good boy in torts class

When Arwood's second year of law school began, Nugget was there. He sat through Torts. He sat through Federal Taxation. He sat at her feet in student organization meetings, in moot court prep sessions, in the library during finals week when the building felt like a pressure cooker. Students who didn't know Arwood learned her name anyway — because they wanted to say hi to Nugget, and found themselves talking to her instead.

"Law school is such a highly stressful environment, and so to see people be so happy and light up when they could just pet him for two seconds, that made me happy," Arwood said. Her naturally introverted personality gave way to hundreds of unexpected conversations, most of them beginning with a wagging tail.

I know people in every class here, and part of it is because they come up to him to say hi and then we talk.

— Rebekah Arwood, J.D. '26, UMKC School of Law

What he still struggles with

Nugget is, by all accounts, a people dog. His greatest professional challenge is not anxiety-response tasks, not sitting still through long lectures, not navigating crowded hallways on a busy Monday morning. His greatest challenge is passing another human without trying to greet them.

"The only thing that Nugget struggled with during training, and still struggles with, is that he can't go up and say hi to every single person he sees," Arwood said. "He's a people dog for sure." She describes training a service dog as a process with no defined endpoint: even after certification, she continued preparing him for courtrooms, offices, and client waiting rooms — environments where he would need to hold his composure while Arwood held hers.

The diploma with the paw print

At commencement in May 2026, Nugget walked the stage. The School of Law had prepared a special degree — "juris dogtorate" — in the same format as the J.D., signed where a dean's signature might go with a single paw print. The audience, already watching Arwood receive her doctoral hood, saw a three-year-old golden retriever standing at her feet.

It was great to be able to have him up on the stage with me, because I would not have completed law school if it weren't for him being with me. That recognition of him being with me and seeing it all come together... it was wonderful.

— Rebekah Arwood, J.D. '26

Arwood is now studying for the bar exam — scheduled for July 28 and 29. She's given Nugget what she calls a "luxurious 10-week vacation." He still goes with her on walks and outings, keeping his skills from going rusty, but the intensity of a law school day is temporarily shelved. After the bar, she plans to practice family law, with Nugget at her side in client interviews, office work, and courtrooms.

One thing she wants people to understand

Arwood is careful, and pointed, about one thing: Nugget is a psychiatric service dog, not an emotional support animal. The legal threshold under the ADA is specific: a psychiatric service dog must be trained to detect the onset of an episode and take a specific action to help avoid or lessen its impact. ADA.gov guidance states explicitly that a dog whose "mere presence provides comfort" does not qualify. Service dogs carry full public-access rights under federal law; emotional support animals do not. Conflating the two, Arwood says, actively harms people who depend on service dogs for daily function.

"Don't confuse the two," she said, "and don't argue that you can have your animal anywhere and everywhere, because that hurts people who do have a service animal." The larger message runs underneath all of it: invisible disabilities are real, accommodation is not weakness, and a golden retriever in a courtroom is not a punchline.

He'll still be on duty, just like we were in law school.

— Rebekah Arwood, J.D. '26

Somewhere in Kansas City right now, the most popular graduate of the UMKC School of Law is probably napping. His diploma is signed in paw prints. In a few weeks, he'll be back at work — the same dog he always was, just with better credentials.