Old dog, good deeds.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (RAN April 22, 2008):Personal Life: In photo captions accompanying a story about a therapy dog on Page B1 on Monday, the name of the school the dog was visiting was misidentified. The dog was visiting Prairie Mountain School in the Bethel School District.

It's like getting an Oscar for lifetime achievement, only without the speech: Gracie the Dog has been inducted into the Oregon Animal Hall of Fame for her long years of "unselfish and courageous accomplishments (that) exemplify the affection, loyalty, security, public service and value of the human-animal bond."

All that heavy praise has not gone to 13-year-old Gracie's head. On a recent sunny afternoon, she accompanied her owner and chauffeur, Maryl Barker, to Prairie Mountain School in far west Eugene to visit the first-graders in teacher Robin Hanson's class.

Suffering from arthritis and other vagaries of old age, Gracie didn't bound in with the youthful enthusiasm Hanson remembers from the dog's earliest visits more than a decade ago. Now, the heavyset Shar-Pei and Labrador mix walks laboriously, accepting pats and greetings from the children before lying down on the far side of the classroom.

"She's been coming to my classes for 12 years - she was just a baby then," Hanson said. "She's changed so much. I'm sure the students I had that long ago would not recognize her now, but these children don't care that she's old."

In fact, when the "Be Cool, Play It Safe" video started - starring Gracie, of course - the children didn't seem to notice the difference between the young, vivacious black dog on the screen and the sedate, graying old lady napping on the rug.

In the film - one in the "Gracie's Great Adventure" series made when Gracie was a pup of 3 - she helps an actor teach children how to be safe when crossing the street and riding in a car.

"The videos deal with child safety. They focus on the major injuries that happen to children and how they can learn to avoid them," Hanson said. "They're so well done and so entertaining, especially with Gracie in them - the kids watch them again and again and never get tired of them."

After the video, the youngsters flock around to pet Gracie, some even resting their heads on her broad side, as Barker presents each child with a Gracie book, audiotape and coloring page in a plastic carrying case. She writes an inscription inside each book - "with love from Gracie" - to each child's name, and stamps underneath with an inked paw print taken originally from Gracie's right front paw.

"She's been such a wonderful dog all these years, and so good for children who either don't have pets or who have fear of dogs," Hanson said as she watched. "Every year, she's just as calm and gracious and sweet as ever, just older and slower."

Briar Royer, a new student in Hanson's class, pronounced Gracie "really nice," as he colored his picture of her, doing a good job of staying within the lines. "I haven't seen her before. I like her."

A classmate, Madison Matin said she misses Gracie between visits. Jessie Johnson contrasted Gracie's calm with that of Riley, her family's 3-year-old golden retriever, "who isn't very," she said.

Besides Hanson's class - the first Gracie ever visited - Gracie has attended day care centers, preschools, many elementary classes and special education programs, where she proved especially adept at working with autistic children, many of whom accepted her presence more comfortably than they did most people's, her citation said.

In 2000, she became the first therapy dog to visit the Shriners Hospital in Portland, and her visit was so successful that the Shriners expanded and still runs a therapy animal program.

Gracie regularly participates in the R.E.A.D. program, through which dogs visit the Eugene Public Library and the city's parks and recreation programs to "listen" to children read.

Gracie's own life had its downs before its ups. Barker adopted her from the Greenhill Humane Society nearly a year after her previous companion, a Lab-shepherd mix named Murphy, died at age 14.

"The card on the front of the kennel said, `6-month-old Lab-Sharpei mix, a stray found running loose on Lorane Highway,'" Barker wrote in a description of Gracie and her accomplishments. "She sat quietly, wagging her tail at me. This was a good sign."

Taken by the pup's calm but outgoing demeanor, Barker adopted her and began taking her to her office every day, where she "provided entertainment and stress relief for 30 employees and countless visitors to the business."

It was just a step from there to visiting children and winning them over with the same undivided attention and uncritical patience that wowed the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association and the Oregon Animal Health Foundation, which bestow the annual hall of fame honor.

The Oregon Animal Hall of Fame is the second-oldest such awards program among veterinary organizations in the United States, says Raina Dey, spokeswoman for the veterinary association. Since instituting the award in 1988, the two groups have honored dogs, cats, horses, an animal welfare group, a horse therapy group and a llama.

This year, the other honoree besides Gracie was a horse named Butterscotch.

Two years ago, another Eugene area animal, a cat named Cassidy, was admitted to the hall of fame.

Cassidy was rescued after being shot.

One of his legs had to be amputated because of his injuries. He was adopted by veterinary nurse Randi Golub and quickly became a favorite therapy cat at Eugene-Springfield area nursing homes, retirement centers and schools.