|Photo by Emma Delk| Gov. Jim Justice, center, celebrates Babydog's birthday with his wife Cathy Justice, right, at John Marshall High School.

The most famous dog in the state celebrated her fifth birthday at John Marshall High School alongside all fourth and fifth grade students from Marshall County Schools.

Gov. Jim Justice’s English bulldog, Babydog, took a trip to the county to celebrate her birthday with cake, cookies and plenty of pets while her “dad” imparted the harms of drug abuse as part of the GameChanger program.

GameChanger is a drug misuse prevention program supported by Justice, the West Virginia Department of Education, the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. The program assists schools in building environments that prevent opioid and other drug use before it starts.

Before Babydog made her appearance, the fourth and fifth graders gathered at the JMHS Center for Performing Arts to watch the debut of the drug misuse prevention program’s new video, “You Have What It Takes,” which is catered to third through sixth graders.

The video debut coincided with Moundsville Middle School’s induction into the GameChanger program. MMS joined JMHS, Cameron High School and Cameron Elementary School as Marshall County Schools in the program.

The video imparted to students how drug use can “weigh people down.” To demonstrate this, the students in the video ran through an obstacle course two times. The first time, they raced through the course with no impediments, while the second time, they attempted to complete the course with weights on their bodies.

Joe Boczek, GameChanger founder and executive director, said the obstacle course example demonstrated to children “the correlation of what happens to your body when you put things into it that you shouldn’t be putting into it.”

According to Boczek, the video also taught students methods for resisting peer pressure when they are asked to do things they “know better than they should do.”

“You Have What It Takes” was the second video produced by GameChanger, with their first video, “One Pill Can Kill,” targeted at high school students. Boczek said GameChanger was currently preparing the last film in the series for kindergarten through second graders so that all grade levels could participate in the program.

“It’s important to begin drug education at a young age,” Boczek said. “Once we finish the final video, we will have sequential videos to educate children on aspects of drug use that are age-appropriate for them. This is an effort everyone’s pulling together to send a message that West Virginia is not going to sit here at 50th [in the country] in this dreaded scourge of opioid addiction.”

As the “Head Coach” of the GameChanger program in the state, Justice visited Marshall County students to celebrate Babydog’s birthday and emphasize the harms of drug use.

Before Justice took to the stage, a video gave students background information about Babydog. Students learned Justice was gifted the English bulldog at Christmas 2019 and that her favorite food is chicken nuggets.

After the introduction, Babydog made her way into the auditorium. Students stood up from their seats to get a look at the English bulldog as she sniffed the front of the stage. Once she was hoisted up into her seat under a “Happy Birthday” banner, Justice and the First Lady of West Virginia, Cathy Justice, joined her on stage.

Babydog began the presentation facing backward from the crowd, distracted by the banner and balloons prepared for the special occasion. When she finally turned to face the crowd, the students erupted into cheers while Justice petted her.

Justice said he was “tickled” to see the crowd awaiting them with such enthusiasm, as they had traveled “all the way from the western end of the state” on Tuesday morning to make it to JMHS for the celebration.

Justice added to the origin story of Babydog given in her introductory video. He said she was given her name when his 2-year-old grandson asked him on Christmas Day in 2019, “Where’d that baby dog go?”

“Ever since that Christmas, she’s made everybody smile,” Justice said. “She loves everybody. That’s all there is to it.”

Before further celebrations for Babydog commenced, Justice reminded the students that “Babydog doesn’t want you to screw it [their lives] up” by using drugs.

The governor recounted a recent reminder he received of the harm of drug use. He said while in line at an Arby’s drive-thru 10 days ago, he noticed the car in front of them was decorated with a cross with “1993-2023” written at the bottom of it.

When he pulled around to the front window, Justice was informed by the drive-thru employee that the car in front of him had paid for its food.

“At that time, I’m thinking, ‘Has this family not had a tough enough go at it?” recalled Justice. “They lost a loved one, and there’s a good chance that it had something to do with drugs.”

Justice was able to track down who was in the car in front of him and learned that the family member who had passed away, Amber, was a former player he had coached at Greenbrier East High School.

“Lo and behold, Amber played basketball for me for a long time,” Justice said. “She died of a fentanyl overdose, and they said it was the first pill that she took. Drug use is something that touches all of our lives and cannibalizes us if we don’t watch out.”

Justice asked the students in the crowd not to do drugs, reminding them that he, Cathy Justice and Babydog “loved them all.”

After Justice’s speech, Boczek thanked the governor for accepting the head coach role with GameChanger. He noted Cathy Justice was also involved in drug prevention in the state through the Communities In Schools program.

Dean Hartley of Hartley Law Group, the sponsor of the JMHS GameChanger program, then presented a $30,000 check on behalf of the firm to fund drug use prevention and education through GameChanger programming at Marshall County Schools.

After the check presentation, Babydog’s birthday celebration began in earnest. The English bulldog was presented with gifts prepared by Marshall County students and staff, including chew toys, cards and a banner decorated with her name and picture.

The Moundsville Middle School band and cheer squad then led the crowd in a rendition of the “Happy Birthday” song.

Following the gift presentation, students eagerly lined up to pet the English bulldog. As they waited, chants of “Babydog” periodically arose from the crowd.

In addition to getting to pet the first dog of West Virginia, the students received cookies decorated with Babydog’s face.

Justice said seeing such a celebration for Babydog was “special,” adding that he and Cathy Justice “love her to death.”

“Babydog has a really great message, and the message is simple — she makes other people smile all the time, and she loves everybody,” Justice said. “Why can’t it just stop there? Really and truthfully, if we could all make each other smile and love everybody, it would be a heck of a lot better world.”

Babydog’s was not the only birthday celebrated at JMHS on Tuesday, with Superintendent Shelby Haines sharing a birthday with the English bulldog. Haines noted the students were “very attentive” during the GameChanger video and “reacted appropriately” when they saw the weight of addiction on the body.

“I hope they take that message home to their parents and talk about those things, and then we can build some similar activities back into their schools,” Haines said. “The children love Babydog, so it was a big deal for them to get to pet Babydog on the way out. I’m very proud of our students in Marshall County who were very polite and respectful and said ‘Thank you” to the governor on their way out.”