The victims of former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar came forward for seven days. One at a time, 156 women steeled their courage and shared their stories of how the once-revered doctor sexually assaulted them during treatments for sports injuries.
They made their raw, searing, impassioned statements as part of Nassar’s sentencing in a Michigan court. They were not just talking to the judge. They addressed Nassar himself, who sat only feet away as he listened to one young woman after another tell of the damage he did.
Kyle Stephens, who said she was repeatedly abused by Nassar starting when she was six years old, was the first to give her impact statement.
“Perhaps you have figured it out by now,” she said at the end of her statement, “but little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world.”
Parents also approached the podium. One was the mother of a girl who committed suicide as a result of his abuse. Like so many others, she was there hoping to have an influence on Nassar’s sentencing.
For many, it was the first time going public with the anguishing secrets they had kept locked away for years. Some had tried to get authorities to listen, but the doctor was too vaunted and their accusations were not taken seriously. Coming forward and facing their abuser was both empowering and emotionally exhausting.
Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, who called his former patients survivors, not victims, offered empathy, comfort, and sometimes advice for each of the young women who spoke.
“The monster who took advantage of you is going to wither, much like the scene in The Wizard of Oz where the water gets poured on the witch and the witch withers away,” Judge Aquilina told one of them. “That’s what’s going to happen to him, because as you get stronger, as you overcome—because you will—he gets weaker and he will wither away.”
She told another victim, “I wish my robe came with a magic wand so I can wave it over you and heal you.”
Judge Aquilina’s supportive, personalized comments bolstered the women and their families in the courtroom.
And when they left the courtroom, someone else was waiting for them if they needed a little extra comfort or a break from the grueling process.
He was not a judge. Quite the opposite, actually. He was there to offer nonjudgmental support. He’s listed (last) on the staff page of Small Talk Children’s Assessment Center. During his time outside the courtroom, he wore a blue bandanna and a blue necktie dappled with little white bones.
Preston, a black Labrador retriever, was sworn in as an official canine advocate in 2016 and has been helping young victims of crime for Small Talk since. His bandanna or tie—or, in the case of the Nassar sentencing, both—help him know he’s on the clock. Preston saves his more energetic Lab qualities for when his outfit comes off.
A detective who had worked with Preston in other abuse cases had recommended him for the Nassar sentencing. Preston proved to be a popular pup. He was frequently surrounded by people wanting some of what he offered. Many of the young women and families coming out of the courtroom stopped to visit with him, pet him, or hug him. They found refuge in his friendly, kind, soothing demeanor.
“Having Preston here has just been a joy,” former Central Michigan University gymnast Samantha Ursch told ABC News. “He really seeks out wanting to comfort people.”
Attorneys sought him out as well. Even news reporters befriended him—and wrote stories about him.
“People were looking for him and so happy when they found him,” says Ashley Vance, his handler, who is also a crisis counselor for Small Talk. “We definitely saw plenty of tears flowing.
“Preston seems to know when someone is in pain. He just somehow picks up on it and knows what he needs to do. Sometimes he nuzzles, sometimes he gets playful, it just depends. He was in his element at the sentencing and helped a lot of people just by being Preston.”
The Nassar case was a one-off for Preston. He usually spends his forty-hour workweek helping young victims of abuse. The majority of children he works with have been sexually abused. He hunkers close to them on the witness stand in courtrooms and stays by their side at the Small Talk office in Lansing.
The children he helps are as young as three years old.
Children’s advocacy centers like Small Talk strive to make the child-abuse investigation and court process as easy for children as possible by providing a sensitive and child-friendly atmosphere. They try to conduct only one forensic interview with one interviewer to avoid revictimizing children with repeated sessions. Individual counseling and group therapy are available for free.
From the time children walk into Small Talk until they’re done with the court process, Preston is there for them. He’s a constant and steady presence at the center. If they’re interested—and they usually are—he’ll hang out with them. In group therapy, if the children want him to be part of the group, he’s happy to stay with them in the room, getting pats and hugs or just being a calming or funny presence.
Children love giving him snacks in exchange for him doing something they ask, like “shake” or “lie down.” These snacks aren’t just any dog treats, but healthy dried-green-bean treats. He’s mad about them. The staff tried raw carrots at first, but that was too messy, with drooly carrot bits ending up all over the floor. The kids think it’s hilarious that he loves green beans, and they enjoy getting him to do tricks for them.
It can be just enough of a reset for them to forget their troubles long enough to catch their breath.
Preston is considered a facility dog or a facility therapy dog. Facility dogs are highly trained dogs who partner with people working in certain settings. Educational and mental health professionals, social workers and advocates, different types of therapists, first responders, and clergy are among the people who might qualify to have a facility dog.
These dogs are owned by the facility, but taken care of by an employee who works with the people the agency serves—much as happens in the world of police dogs. That person becomes the dog’s handler and best friend. Many of these handlers tend to stay on the job longer than they might otherwise because they don’t want to give up their dog. Preston and other facility dogs can be a boon for employee retention.
Since one of Preston’s primary duties is to be there to help crime victims before they have to testify and then in courtrooms, he’s also known as a canine advocate or courtroom dog. These canine courtroom comforters are growing in popularity as child advocates and prosecutors see their benefits. The Courthouse Dogs Foundation, with 216 dog team members in thirty-eight states and Canada, has seen its membership double in the last three years.
An article on the website of the American Bar Association from back in 2009 helped get the word out about this relatively new role for dogs with observations like these:
Prosecutors and judges are finding that the presence of a well-trained dog aids witness testimony by providing the victim with emotional support and comfort both in the witness room and in the courtroom. Success stories are beginning to emerge demonstrating that the use of canines in the courtroom not only provides the victim with a more positive outcome but also offers the victim a positive, life-changing experience.
It’s hard to imagine appearing in court against the person who committed atrocious crimes against you as a positive and life-changing experience. But if anyone can help make this happen, it’s not surprising that dogs can.
“If you do everything properly beforehand, those kids are so empowered they go in and kick butt,” says Dan Cojanu, founder of the Canine Advocacy Program (CAP), the nonprofit agency that provided Preston to Small Talk.
“Many children who would not have otherwise taken the witness stand have been able to summon their courage because of a dog. The dog made them feel strong and safe. They can be proud of what they were able to do, and sometimes they can call on this strength in the future.”
Celeste Walsen, DVM, executive director of the Courthouse Dogs Foundation (CAP and CDF are not affiliated), says children learn to trust both the dogs and those who work with the dogs. They see how kindly the dogs are treated by the handlers, and they realize the dogs are good and the handlers are kind and caring.
CDF dogs are highly trained. They know dozens of commands and often play fun games with the children, like holding puzzle pieces for them as they put together a puzzle, or even rolling dice. “The children can end up leaving a center talking about the amazing dog, and not being so focused on what happened to them,” Dr. Walsen says. “That’s huge.”
The dogs help children feel more comfortable during forensic interviews, she says. The interviewer has to stay neutral and can’t do much beyond handing a child a Kleenex. Anything more could be seen as leading the child, she says.
“But having a dog on a couch with a child is a legally neutral way a child can feel so much more comfortable. Dogs can raise oxytocin levels, and make the child feel more relaxed. They can prevent the child from shutting down when they’re talking about the horrible crime committed against them.”
And the more details a child can provide about a crime, the more evidence for detectives, and the better and more thorough the investigation. Sometimes a child talks to the dog instead of the interviewer. That’s OK. Children could talk to the wallpaper. As long as they talk about what happened.
“A lot of perpetrators think that a four-year-old won’t tell. That they’re hiding and won’t say anything,” says Dr. Walsen. “A dog can change that completely.”
She says sometimes a dog can even help a case not go to trial, sparing the child the trauma of facing the accused perpetrator in court.
“If a defense attorney sees that a child can talk and that a dog can go with them to court, they’ll think twice about taking it to trial,” she says.
As helpful as dogs are in this environment, they can’t always work miracles. Sometimes a child will freeze at the last minute and be unable to testify, even with the help of their trusty friend.
Dan remembers hearing from one of his canine advocates about a little boy who fell apart and couldn’t take the stand. Not even the boy’s canine advocate, a Labrador named Dodger, could give him the strength to go in front of a judge, jury, and the accused.
“I’m sorry,” the boy said. “Do you think Dodger is still proud of me?”
“Of course he is,” Dodger’s handler told him. “He thinks you are the best.”
The children Preston and other canine advocates accompany to court have to recount the worst moments of their lives. And not in prepared statements, like the victims of Larry Nassar, but in their own words, prompted by questions from attorneys. Sharing their stories is hard enough, but being questioned by the attorney representing the accused can be especially difficult.
Besides counseling and weeks of support to help prepare them for their day in court, Preston’s young friends also receive a fourteen-page activity book. It’s called Preston’s Guide to Court. It portrays him on the cover as a calm, confident cartoon canine walking to a courtroom. (A wooden sign points in the direction of the courtroom, so we know where he’s going.)
It’s clear from his expression that Preston’s got this.
Activity books are usually the stuff of childhood fun: connecting dots, coloring, drawing, winding through mazes. Contentment and crayons. Innocence and idle time.
Preston’s book is cute and cheery, which may be the reason it’s also utterly heartbreaking. It exists only because dark and terrible crimes were committed against the children who hold the book in their hands.
On the first page, happy Preston asks children to write their name. That’s pretty standard. But then he asks for the names of their advocate, their prosecutor, and their detective. Not the stuff of regular activity books. He ends the page on a light note, asking, “What is your favorite treat?” (“Mine is green beans,” he tells them.)
Some pages of the book are just like those of a regular activity book. They feature simple activities with Preston, like coloring his picture, drawing his outline in a connect-the-dots, helping him get to the judge’s gavel in a maze, and finding the Preston who doesn’t match. Others are unflinchingly court-centered. On one page Preston smilingly talks about important rules to follow in court (telling the truth, letting someone know if you have to use the restroom, etc.). On another he tells them, “I felt nervous the first time I went to court. Circle the feelings you have.”
A word search later in the book contains words like “safe,” “courage,” “brave,” “prosecutor,” “judge,” and, of course, “Preston.” Children can even color a courtroom that shows them where everyone from the jury to the court recorder sits.
In real life, when a child’s day in court comes, Preston will already be that child’s friend. The child will walk into the courtroom—like the one he or she colored—and onto the witness stand with Preston.
Preston’s main job is to lie down near the child in the witness box. That’s all. Sometimes a child reaches down and pets Preston. Little ones occasionally rest their feet on him.
“He is amazing in the courtroom. Nothing ruffles him. I think he really knows how important his job is to the children he’s helping,” says Ashley.
Dan says the twenty-seven dogs his agency has produced for child advocacy centers and prosecutors have all been like Preston in temperament. But a couple of these mellow dogs have let it be known that they don’t think much of a defense attorney.
“The dogs can be very protective of the kids, in their own quiet way,” he says. “They have a sense of what’s going on, I’m sure.”
They signal their disapproval silently. It’s by no means aggressive. There’s no growling or bared teeth. It’s nonconfrontational body language. Although the CAP dogs are trained to lie down near the child and never so much as raise their heads on the witness stand, a dog Dan worked with for years—a chocolate Lab named Amos—apparently had enough of a defense attorney one afternoon.
“The defense attorney was raising her voice to a child, and Amos was lying down quietly as usual. But this wasn’t OK with him,” Dan says. “He got up. Just sat up and stared at her silently. He gave her such a look. Like, Really? REALLY?! She lowered the volume and eased up, and Amos went back to lying down again.”
Defense attorneys sometimes used Amos to meet a child on his or her own terms. “They don’t want to hurt the child. By talking a little about Amos and being warmer, they may be able to ask questions without a kid rolling into a ball and crying,” Dan says.
Amos served hundreds of children during his career. He was CAP’s first canine advocate. Like all the other dogs trained by his agency, Amos had initially been slated to be a guide dog with Leader Dogs for the Blind. He was a great dog. But he was a big puller and scared of stairs—potentially disastrous traits in that profession. He had to change careers.
He came to CAP well trained by Leader Dogs. Dan worked with a trainer and taught him not to pull and got him used to stairs. It took a couple of months to make him walk calmly enough that a child could hold his leash, but Dan had plenty of time to devote to getting Amos ready for his career; his own career as a counselor and then supervisor of victim services at the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office in Pontiac, Michigan, had come to an end when they offered financial incentives to retire. So he combined his love of being an advocate for victims and his love of dogs to create his organization.
Dan says he hasn’t made a dime in the eight years he’s been running CAP. Some income would help, but when he thinks about moving on and finding someone to take over, his wife reminds him, “When you come home from being with the dogs and the kids, you’re on fire.”
He and Amos used to do crisis work at a juvenile detention center to relax the youth before therapy. Even the first time Amos joined a group, it looked like he knew who needed the most help.
“He went right up to two of the kids in the group and licked their faces immediately,” Dan says. “It turned out that both of them had lost a parent that week. How could he know? But he seemed to be that tuned in. His intuitiveness knocked my socks off.”
One of Amos’s earliest court advocacy experiences was with a girl who was petrified of dogs. The girl, about ten years old, had been mauled by a dog three years earlier and had scars on her neck and behind an ear. At first she and her mother turned down the offer of a dog who might be able to help her in the courtroom. But then they saw Amos. Dan assured her he was a really good dog who would never hurt her. The girl’s apprehension decreased, and she said it was OK for him to come close.
Amos didn’t just sit and wait for her to pat him. He pulled out all the stops. He flipped onto his back and wiggled around. “The girl started laughing hysterically. He looked like such a boob, but she started petting his belly and a few minutes later she was so comfortable with him.
“Later that day I hear a scream. ‘AMOS!’ It was the girl. She’d just spotted him and was thrilled.” Dogs weren’t allowed in that judge’s courtroom at the time, so Amos got her right up to the point of testifying, and she faced the defendant with a confidence she didn’t have before.
Something as simple as a child holding the dog’s leash can make all the difference.
“It gives children control and power in a powerless situation,” Dan says. “We tell them that this is their dog for as long as they’re here today. This gives them enormous power. All they’ve been doing is listening to people telling them what they have to do. Now they get to be in charge of a dog.”
Older children were bolstered by Amos, too. A sixteen-year-old girl was about to face a man Dan says had been “pimping her out for years.” Dan had told her she needed to get to the witness box and not look at the guy until she was told she had to do so to identify him.
She and Amos walked up together and took their places. When she finally had to look at the man, she was overcome. She dropped the leash and was inconsolable. She cried so hard her false eyelashes fell off.
But then a funny thing happened.
She reached down to touch Amos and stared at the man. Slowly she grew stronger. Every time she answered a question, she seemed more self-assured. Whenever she was struggling, she felt Amos. She stared the man down. By the end, Dan said, she seemed emboldened, almost a different person than the frightened girl who had first laid eyes on the man.
Judge Kelley Kostin, a 52nd District Court judge in Oakland County, Michigan, witnessed this sort of transformation as soon as she opened her courtroom’s doors to Amos and other advocate dogs.
“I’ve seen it over and over again where a child is scared to death. It’s intimidating to come into a courtroom. But there’s something about having a dog there. I recommend this 100 percent to other judges,” says Judge Kostin, who has also worked with these dogs in her veterans treatment court.
Judge Kostin often suggests to children reluctant to speak that they talk directly to the dog. “The prosecutor or DA would ask questions and I’d say, ‘You can tell Amos. He’ll listen to you.’” He always did.
Amos worked with hundreds of children during his eight-year career. He was going strong at age ten. He loved to go to work and adored meeting new children. His home life was happy and cozy.
On June 16, 2018, it all came crashing to an end. On June 17, this led a CAP Facebook post:
It is with deep sorrow and profound sadness that we share with you our beloved Amos has crossed the rainbow bridge.
Yesterday, Amos suffered a severe neurological event that left him in pain, paralyzed and unable to control his bodily functions. After wonderful medical care and consultation, we made the swift, but mindful decision to let him go. It is our belief that a hero such as Amos should have his dignity at the end.
Dan wrote these words of remembrance:
His legacy will continue to live on through the other canine advocates as they continue to pave the way for change in the criminal justice process for our young and most vulnerable victims.
The use of trained therapy-style dogs for trauma or a crisis hasn’t received much attention from researchers. But that may be changing. In 2018 a study in Frontiers in Psychology mentioned it was probably the first study to investigate how and if therapy dogs can help in the aftermath of a traumatic event.
The researchers used an eleven-minute compilation of extremely disturbing scenes from the film Irreversible, which critic Roger Ebert described “a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable.” The authors of the study wrote that the film has been shown in their laboratory and others “to reliably induce physiological and subjective stress responses as well as intrusive memories.” They found that the group of participants who interacted with a therapy dog for fifteen minutes after the film reported lower anxiety, less negative affect, and more positive affect (basically fewer negative emotions and more positive emotions) than groups that did not.
It was an intriguing study. But those who volunteer their highly trained dogs to help in the wake of disasters and mass traumatic events could have predicted the outcomes. With all the natural disasters of late, these dogs and handlers have been getting plenty of experience. But it’s not just trained dogs who can make a difference. Even our humble pet dogs can sometimes be what it takes to keep us going after we’ve lost everything.
On October 9, 2017, the Tubbs fire in Northern California robbed an old friend of almost everything in her life. Joan Hoerner escaped with her little dog, her purse, and her car. It was the day before her eighty-fourth birthday, and also the day before she was going to finalize the sale of her house in a tree-filled neighborhood in Santa Rosa.
Whipped forward by furious winds, the flames blazed their way to her address on the first night of what would become the most destructive wildfire in the history of California—at least until the following year. At around 2 a.m., she and Tiger woke up to neighbors pounding on the door and telling her she needed to evacuate. A fire that had started just a few hours earlier in the wine-country town of Calistoga was now threatening their neighborhood.
It had made its terrifying twelve-mile run in less than four hours.
She hurried to change and followed the neighbors’ car in her 1998 Chrysler Sebring convertible—a car she’d hung on to because it was cool and reliable. Tiger rode, as usual, on his plaid blanket on the back seat. She figured they’d return in a few hours, but was glad to see that Tiger, an old dog not used to late-night outings, had dozed off straightaway.
They all drove to a friend’s house high on a hill a couple of miles away. For the rest of the night they watched the fire snake and pour its way through the night—orange against black, like some nightmare from Halloween. They couldn’t see their neighborhood, but they couldn’t imagine how it would be spared when the fire was so swift and greedy.
Joan called me at 5 a.m. and said the fire was getting too close and they would be evacuating once again later that morning. They planned to drive north to the town of Windsor, where her neighbors’ family lived. We made a plan to meet there and bring her back to San Francisco.
The drive would normally take about ninety minutes. But Highway 101 was closed as I approached Santa Rosa, so I had to try to make my way north on suburban streets instead of the highway. In some places the curtain of smoke was so gray and thick that it hurt to breathe. Every few minutes I’d have to take another route because the fire was scorching areas all around. Sirens sounded in stereo as crews scrambled to close roads and detour traffic.
When I finally arrived, Joan was holding Tiger, her fifteen-year-old Maltese-poodle-mystery mix. She had been stoic all night and morning, but broke down in my arms. When she could talk, she told me, “You smell fresh, like nice shampoo.”
I was dreading the ride back on the unpredictable and dangerous streets, but just as we approached Santa Rosa, the highway reopened and we were able to stay on 101.
At first this seemed like good news.
But within a couple of minutes, I noticed something disconcerting. The guardrails were on fire. The posts were made of wood, and as they burned, the steel railings drooped, either from lack of support or because they had softened. You wouldn’t want to have to pull over here.
For a few miles it was like a highway through hell. I felt like we were driving in a Bruegel painting of the underworld. Structures were still on fire or smoldering, and endless smoke—black plumes, gray plumes—pushed into a butterscotch-pudding sky.
Even in San Francisco—although we were a good fifty-five miles away, and two blocks from the Pacific Ocean—the air choked with smoke, and ashes sprinkled cars for days.
Joan didn’t feel like eating. Gus, who weighs ten times as much as Tiger, kept approaching them with toys. It looked like he wanted to make them feel better. But his size and enthusiasm were too much for Joan in her exhausted state, so I had him settle.
The next day, as we were about to leave for her birthday dinner at Original Joe’s, which she hadn’t been to in years, I got a Facebook message. Her neighbor had written with news that Joan’s home was gone. A friend had sneaked into the area and said pretty much all the homes had burned, and nothing was left.
I decided not to say anything until we had photos to confirm. Why give Joan bad news on her birthday when her spirits were up if we didn’t know for sure? She ate heartily and had a glass of wine. She said she wasn’t going to let some fire ruin her celebration.
The neighbor messaged the photos the next morning. All that remained of Joan’s house were bricks from the patio and fireplace, and twisted metal remnants of a porch swing and loungers in the backyard. One house after the other looked like this. The fire had swept through and obliterated several blocks. It didn’t seem possible that this had once been a cozy, tree-filled neighborhood with pretty yards.
Everything she owned was smoke and ashes—eighty-four years of life, so much of it irreplaceable. Photos, an old leather-bound family Bible with her family’s history tucked inside, and favorite recipes were the first items she thought of, but it was the everyday items she missed the most. Her clothes, her jewelry, her books.
She rarely cried in the days that followed, breaking down only when someone she didn’t know learned what had happened and showed her empathy. That always got her, and it embarrassed her to show her emotions like this. She had warriored her way through two serious cancers and her husband’s death and had barely shed a tear.
As she came to grips with her losses, I realized how lucky she was to have escaped alive. If not for her neighbors, she might have ended up trapped and unable to get out before it was too late.
Twenty-two people were killed as a result of the Tubbs fire. Carmen Berriz, seventy-five, died in a backyard pool in the arms of her husband, who survived. They had met in Havana, Cuba, when she was twelve and he was thirteen. Arthur Grant, ninety-five, and Suiko Grant, seventy-five, perished in their wine cellar. The fire also stole the life of Christina Hanson, twenty-seven, who was confined to a wheelchair because of spina bifida. Valerie Evans, seventy-five, died trying to save her dogs.
The fire destroyed 5,636 structures and 36,807 acres. Other California wildfires had destroyed far more acreage, but at that point no fires had come close to decimating this many structures.
Santa Rosa housing had been scarce before the fire. Now it was proving impossible for many trying to find rentals in the area. Joan was picky about what she wanted. It had to be something on the first floor, with an enclosed yard. It was all about Tiger.
Tiger was constantly at her side after the fire, far more than he used to be. She toted him around, plopping him on her lap while watching TV. They had chats about this and that, and she promised him she’d have a yard for him just like in their old house. She told everyone, from my kind neighbors who had taken her into their large in-law unit to the people she met while trying to replenish her wardrobe, that she was determined to keep going and not give up. Not for herself, but for Tiger. He was like her child, and he had become the focus of her desire to continue trying. The reason to live.
“He needs me and I have to stay alive and be strong for him,” she said.
I’m pretty sure that Tiger, all eight pounds of him, did more to keep her going than all of her friends and family combined.
Shortly before the fire, I had been looking into flying to Texas to watch some dogs who help people recover from disasters and other crises. Hurricane Harvey, with its catastrophic flooding, had destroyed or damaged three hundred thousand structures in the state. Hundreds of thousands of Texans had been without electricity for too long. More than a hundred people statewide had died as a result of the storm.
I knew that dogs were working there because during my visit to Japan, I’d spent a few days exploring the Kyoto area. On a walk through the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest early one morning when it was uncharacteristically low on visitors, I asked a rare passerby if he could take my photo with the stunning giant bamboo backdrop—something I couldn’t do without a selfie stick or very long arms. It turned out he was an American and was there in part recuperating from the loss of his beloved dog.
We talked dogs for a while, and when he found out why I was in Japan, he shared that he was a physician in Houston, and that he was intrigued by the healing power of animals, especially dogs.
“Besides their companionship, they have real skills,” Jim Kelaher, MD, told me as we strolled through the towering green bamboos. “I have this interest in whether dogs change their behavior when their humans get sick, and maybe even before they’re diagnosed, how dogs grieve, and everything else that makes them special.”
It turns out he had been a volunteer with an organization that uses dogs to help survivors of disasters, and he told me about some of the work he had done when he was still active with the group.
That in the middle of a bamboo forest in Japan I should meet an American doctor who is fascinated by dogs and volunteered to help disaster survivors with a crisis-dog organization is one of those enchanting coincidences of travel. I knew about dogs who do this work and had been planning on including them in this book, but this fell right into my lap—or at least into my notebook, where I wrote down the info he gave me.
Once back home, I reached out to Hope Animal-Assisted Crisis Response to learn more about the group Dr. Kelaher had told me about. It’s one of a few organizations in the United States that has rigorous standards for screening and training dogs and their people to help in the aftermath of disasters.
The hurricane and flood recovery was under way after Harvey, and Hope’s dog teams were traveling from across the country to assist. As I was looking at dates for a possible trip to Texas to watch some of these teams in action, the Tubbs fire broke out. A dozen other fires were ravaging Northern California at the same time. They were collectively known as the Northern California firestorm.
I wouldn’t have to travel to Texas to see crisis-response dogs at work. The firestorm would bring them close to my backyard. In fact, about ten days after Joan lost her home, I needed to bring her up to the Local Assistance Center, a partnership of local, state, and federal agencies set up as a disaster-assistance one-stop shop.
I learned from Pam Bertz, a regional director of Hope, that they’d have some crisis-assistance dogs there. So along with Joan’s insurance info and the few papers she had in her purse, I brought my notebook and camera. This would be a multipurpose trip.
As we got close to downtown Santa Rosa, Tiger sat up on his plaid blanket on the back seat of my yellow Honda Fit and looked out the window. I wondered if his olfactory memory made him realize he was in his old town, or if the smell took him back to the strange day when he went for many rides in the car while the air was heavy with smoke, and maybe even with the smell of fear.
We couldn’t get into Joan’s neighborhood. It was still closed, waiting for authorities to inspect it to see if it was safe for residents to visit. Joan wanted to check if anything was salvagable. Maybe some jewelry or sentimental collectable porcelain dolls.* With that part of our visit scratched, we headed for the disaster center.
It was set up on the first floor of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat building. Dozens of government agencies and support services, including FEMA, the American Red Cross, housing-assistance groups, and building permitting agencies, were represented at tables in several expansive rooms.
As we spoke with people at a number of agencies, we realized that Joan was far from an outlier: Nearly everyone milling about and going from table to table had lost their homes. There were hundreds of people, from young children to men and women far older than Joan. Many seemed in remarkably good spirits. But others were worn-out, walking around dazed under the fluorescent lighting in clothing someone had given them because they had nothing.
Joan was working with a FEMA counselor and would be busy for a while. They didn’t need my help, so I set out to look for some Hope dogs. Several pet dogs were wandering the rooms with their people, but the dogs I was looking for would be wearing green vests. I learned that two of them were off at a first-responder staging area, giving comfort to those who had been risking their lives to get the fire under control. After a while I spotted an Australian shepherd walking beside a woman wearing official-looking credentials on a lanyard around her neck. The dog’s fur was so thick that I couldn’t see a vest, but when I got closer, I saw that it stood out from his fluffy coat.
This was Cody. It said so in bold yellow letters on top of his vest. His handler and other half, Kathy Felix, told me she and Cody normally volunteer with other organizations for more typical therapy dog gigs. They go to libraries to help children learn to read, and to schools for disabled children. They visit medical clinics, and they spend time at college campuses to help reduce stress during finals.
The two had recently gone through Hope’s intensive screening and multiday training in Southern California. They were tested in a mock disaster situation typical of what they might see on a “callout,” where there were frantic people, traumatized children, and chaotic scenes at every turn.
“I came home a little awed by the responsibility of being with persons hurting so badly,” Kathy told me.
This was only their second time at a disaster site. She was moved by how people were coping with their profound losses. She told me about something that had happened earlier that day.
A man approached her and asked if he could pet her dog. As he snuggled with Cody on the floor, Kathy asked if he had a dog.
Yes, he answered, he had a dog. But he had lost his dog in the fire. And he had lost his wife as well.
“He experienced such tragedy, and he only wanted to hug Cody,” she said. “It’s so heartbreaking. I hope Cody made him feel a little better for a few minutes.”
As we were talking, a burly man in his thirties approached Kathy and asked if he could pet Cody. As he did, he told Kathy his story. He had been between jobs and could no longer afford renter’s insurance. He and his wife had let the insurance go, reasoning it was more important to pay for rent and food. “It wasn’t the priority,” he told her. “Hindsight is everything, I guess.”
By now he was kneeling down with Cody, who was sitting and looking at him with the most empathetic dog eyes I’d ever seen. Kathy listened in a natural, caring, nonintrusive way, never prodding, just being there.
The home he and his family had been renting on a vineyard had burned to the ground. They’d seen the fire approaching in the dark—an orange glow rapidly growing brighter. He called 9-1-1 several times and finally got through. The dispatcher told him they couldn’t help, that the whole area was a tinderbox, and to get to safety immediately.
He and his wife and twelve-year-old son gathered some clothes, a few cherished items, essential papers like birth and marriage certificates, and loaded the car with their kelpie–black Lab mix and one of their two cats. The other cat had run off toward the blaze. He promised his son the cat would survive, that he’d come back and the cat would be there waiting for him.
Flames engulfed the vineyard’s larger house. He realized theirs would be gone soon. They could feel the heat as they ran to the car. The fire was encroaching from all around now.
“It all happened so fast. If we didn’t get out right then, we’d be trapped,” he said. “We got out of there just in time, I think.”
As he spoke, he seemed to be unconsciously grabbing onto the loose skin of Cody’s neck every couple of seconds and releasing it. Cody didn’t mind. He looked like he was enjoying a massage.
The man began talking to Cody.
“We were really lucky. Material things can be replaced. We have a new place to stay for a while. But it doesn’t allow dogs, isn’t that a bad rule?
“So our dog is staying with friends. We’ll hopefully have him back soon when we get a new place. We’re all safe, and it’s going to be OK. Right, Cody?”
Cody’s expression remained the same.
The man went back to talking to Kathy.
“Yeah, I promised that the cat would be OK, and when I went back, there he was. He flicked his tail at me and gave me one of those It’s about time! looks.”
The man beckoned his son, who had been standing nearby.
Kathy introduced herself and Cody and asked the boy about his dog and cats. He told her their names, and said he missed his dog. She invited him to pet Cody. At the invitation, he sat down on the carpet, and Cody went from sitting to lying down. He faced the boy and, in a move that seemed like he was a caring therapist ready to listen to a patient, crossed his soft white paws.
Kathy joined them on the floor, occasionally petting Cody as they talked. I backed off and let them have their conversation.
As I watched, the boy edged closer to Cody, and almost imperceptibly, Cody inched his head closer to the boy. The boy talked to Kathy, who had the demeanor of a gentle and kind grandmother. Then he fell silent. He reached out and touched Cody’s paw. Cody gazed at him. The boy stroked his paws with great tenderness while looking into Cody’s eyes. He didn’t say anything to Cody. He didn’t need to. They were in the same moment.
“Crisis-response dogs are the PhDs of therapy dogs,” Pam says. “They have been through so much training and know how to be calm and comforting in all types of disaster or crisis situations. They can work longer hours than regular therapy dogs.
“Therapy dogs are very special. Crisis-response dogs are off the charts.”
Pam says Hope is the largest crisis-response dog organization in the country, with about 250 dog teams from coast to coast. Its founder was inspired to start the organization after a 1998 Oregon high school shooting that left two dead and twenty-five wounded. She and some other therapy dog handlers had visited to comfort the students. Afterward she realized that she and her dog, and some of the other handlers and their dogs, had soaked up too much emotion.
“It was clear that for crisis work, they needed better-trained dogs and handlers, especially when dealing with issues that can affect mental health,” Pam says. They gradually came up with the type of training that would help volunteers and their dogs weather the storm, or earthquake, or whatever they’d be facing.
Each dog-and-handler team has an “SOS card” they give the team leader when they arrive at a disaster site. It lists the unique signs of stress for the dog and the handler. The team leader and the handlers continually assess the dogs while they’re on the callout. If they see any signs of stress, the dog is pulled and given a rest. The team leader will also pull handlers who appear stressed.
To get dogs ready for some of the sights and sounds they’ll come across, and to keep stress levels down during callouts, they’re exposed to situations they’ll face after real-life disasters. Besides mock disaster-center scenarios like the ones Kathy and Cody went through, there’s also special training for helping first responders. Since the dogs are often requested to visit firefighters and others at base camps, part of their schooling involves going to fire stations and being around equipment, with engines running and an occasional siren blaring.
A firefighter in full gear, including a mask respirator, will approach a dog with treats in gloved hands. Dogs can be apprehensive at first, but firefighters work to show the dogs that they’re just regular people. Sometimes they kneel at dog level to give the treats, or take off the mask. They’re happy to help acclimate the dogs.
“In a deployment, you’ve got these big strong firefighters at base camp on a shift change, and some will come right off a vehicle and fall to their knees when they see our dogs,” Pam says. “They just melt. The dogs help bring a piece of home to these men and women who are often hundreds of miles from their own homes.”
As long as the canine comfort teams are available and they’re invited by an organization like FEMA, the American Red Cross, or a state office of emergency services, they’ll go to any disaster or crisis where they can help as people are starting to recover. Most of the financial burden is on the volunteers, who pay for their own airfare, rental cars, and a portion of their lodging.
“It takes a very special person to do this kind of volunteer work,” Pam says. “Those who can do it are game changers.”*
There are the little children who won’t say much to anyone after a disaster, and then a volunteer introduces a dog. “You can tell him anything,” the handler may say. “He won’t tell anyone else, I promise.” After petting the dog for a while, the child lifts up the dog’s ear (if it’s a floppy-eared dog) and quietly gives him the lowdown.
Dogs have had a similar effect when they visit after a school shooting. Students cry into a dog’s neck, hug the dog, and may start talking. Maybe not to the dog, but to counselors, or the handler, or one another.
Then there are the people who are so upset and distraught that they’re unable to function at a disaster-recovery center—not the easiest places to navigate even in the best of times. “Would you like a little puppy love?” a handler may ask. A little petting—or, better yet, a head in the lap—can be all it takes to defuse the person’s anxiety.
Pam, like so many who work with dogs, marvels at the way some dogs seem to know who needs help.
“Sometimes you walk into a room with all these people and your dog is already headed toward someone. Maybe they’re giving off smells of stress and the dog knows this is a person who needs them. They’ll pull you to these people.”
She tells the story of a handler who arrived with a dog at an emergency disaster shelter in San Bernardino County after a devastating fire in 2003. The woman’s Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Duke, immediately began pulling. She couldn’t get him to stop. This wasn’t like him. He was usually the model of obedience.
Duke pulled the handler to a boy lying on a cot. The boy reached out and stroked Duke. He invited Duke up to his cot. Duke hopped up and lay down next to the boy. Duke’s handler found out the boy was by himself in the shelter. His mother had passed away a month before. His father had brought him there, but something happened and he had to be taken to a hospital by ambulance. The boy’s cat had died in the fire.
The boy was running a fever. A Red Cross volunteer had come to his cot to see him, but she thought he needed to be assessed by a nurse, who couldn’t leave her station except for an emergency. The boy didn’t want to go to the first aid station. He had been refusing to get up, silently shaking his head.
After hugging Duke for a while, he had an idea. “I’ll go,” he said, “if Duke can go with me. Could he?”
“Of course! He’d love to go with you,” Duke’s handler said. Duke helped escort the boy to the first aid station. Duke checked in on him throughout the afternoon.
The boy’s father came back later that day, and they had a teary reunion. He thanked Duke and his handler for how they had helped his son.
Duke received a Red Cross Bravo for Bravery Award for his work with the boy.
“When it comes to helping people in crisis, well-trained dogs can make a huge difference in someone’s demeanor and their ability to handle stress,” Pam says.
Or even not-so-well-trained dogs.
As I write this, it’s been nearly a year since Joan lost everything in the fire. She decided not to rebuild. She used some of her insurance money to buy a small place about twenty-five minutes south of Santa Rosa.
Tiger got his yard.
Tiger hasn’t had formal crisis-response training. I’m not sure he even knows how to sit on command. But he definitely knows how to give an eighty-four-year-old woman a reason to get up each morning.
All he has to do is be a dog.