Therapy dogs help Victoria University students de-stress during exams.

Therapy dogs are helping students at a Victorian university deal with stress during the busy end-of-year exam period.

The program, Paws the Pressure, will see a group of dogs visit Victoria University’s three Melbourne campuses to encourage students to take a break from their studies.

Victoria University (VU) librarian Garry Potter organised the event and said the dogs helped students take their mind off their workload.

“We wanted to give them the opportunity to take their mind off studying for five or 10 minutes and give them a break, because it can be a really stressful time,” he said.

Osteopathy students Hannah Wilkerson and Georgia Le Maitre were studying for an exam on Monday afternoon and swapped their pens for a pat with Juno, a Hungarian vizsla taking part in the program.

“We absolutely love Juno. He’s gorgeous — we just want to give him a cuddle,” Ms La Maitre said.

Ms Wilkerson added: “It absolutely helped me relax for my exam this afternoon.”

Two other dogs — a labradoodle named Maggie and Chev the border collie — joined Juno at the VU city campus library on Monday.

‘We had groups lined up at the door’

Juno’s owner, therapy dog volunteer Marnie Phillips, has been working on the program for the past six months.

“It is just fantastic, we had groups lined up at the door, which was just lovely,” she said.

“It’s terrific to see that dogs can have such an effect on students and … almost everyone.”

While this is the first time Ms Phillips and Juno have visited the university, the pair visit an aged care home in Camberwell every fortnight.

Staff at the library are hoping to benefit from the dog visits, too.

“[Students] need information quickly at this time of year and often don’t have a lot of patience and they can be sometimes be rude to staff,” Mr Potter said.

“We thought this might be an opportunity for them to take it a bit easier and maybe be a bit more gentle on staff as well.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.