It turns out that a St. Bernard doesn’t just look cute — it can give students some peace of mind as finals loom, too.

The dog, Play-Doh and Monopoly were among the de-stressors at a campus stress-free zone Tuesday.

Hosted by Health Enhancement, stress-free zones were created to help students ease anxiety as finals loom. The zones will be held through Thursday. The zones not only include games and stress balls, but have yoga mats, snacks, a massage area, coloring activities and therapy dogs. The zones have now been offered for three years.

Clinical psychologist Megan Rosecrans has given integrative information regarding anxiety.

“One needs to have enough anxiety to perform well on an exam. Without anxiety, we actually will do poorly on an exam,” Rosecrans said. “Also, if someone has too much anxiety, they will also do poorly on the exam. We need to have just enough anxiety about an exam to do well.”

Susan Nichols, volunteer with the Kishwaukee Hospital Healing Paws program, brought her dog Roxy to the therapeutic events.

“When I was working at the hospital I would see some of the therapy dogs walking around seeing patients, and [I] thought that was really cool,” Nichols said. “Even though I work in the pharmacy, I believe sometimes dog therapy helps a lot of people, too.”

Elise Kapala, sophomore journalism and communication major, became interested in coming to the stress-free zone after her sister saw a flier advertising the therapy dogs. Both took advantage of the program.

“We thought it was [an] interesting and really good way to de-stress before finals … I liked blowing bubbles … coloring, playing with cards, and now I am going to meditate,” Kapala said.

Along with the physical de-stressors, there are also paper instructions passed out to students that show them how to de-stress at home.