When there is trauma, a dog can help

Andy and Cooper on a scene

A team of first responders is sitting in a circle. The mood is somber. It's quiet, and pain emanates. This is a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing, which is used after difficult calls.

A door opens, and a dog and his handler walk in. The handler takes the leash off the dog, and the animal immediately goes to the group. There are smiles as the dog puts his head on individuals' laps. The dog makes the rounds, seeming to focus on the first responders who are clearly not doing well.

The sorrow doesn't go away, but the presence of the dog has shifted the mood in the fire station.

This is the story of Cooper, an eleven-year-old Golden Retriever, and his human, Andy Garmezy.

Andy and Cooper are based in Santa Fe and volunteer members of the National Crisis Response Canine organization.

The organization's goal is to use the human-dog connection to help people, young and old, recover from traumatic events. As the National Institute of Mental Health website states, "Canines and their handlers help alleviate stress and anxiety, which allows individuals to preserve and cope with their crisis situation and life."

Andy and Cooper have responded to some of the most horrific events we've seen over the past decades: the Uvalde school shooting, the Surf Side, Florida building collapse, and the Lewiston, Maine mass shooting, among others.

It's hard to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the communities, relatives, friends, and first responders who are impacted by these kinds of tragedies. It starts out as a lovely normal day and then, in a heartbeat, flips to a catastrophe that changes your life.

And yet, as dog lovers, we know that a dog, the right dog, would be a welcome presence after such an event.

Andy emphasized to me that it had to be the right dog. Cooper is that dog. "Cooper has soul," Andy remarked. "He has empathy."

What does that mean? For example, Cooper will immediately go to the person in the hospital bed and then to all the family members gathered. As a Border Collie rounds up sheep, Cooper knows that his job is to just be there, paws on a chest, head on a lap.

And Andy also stressed that Cooper is calm. Think about being a crisis response dog. There is a flight to some new town. There, he is surrounded by "ramped up," sad, angry, and confused people. Even in the aftermath, chaos usually reigns. Cooper remains calm. He is attenuated to the noise. He takes in stride the crying and the intense emotions of the humans he's working with.

For example, after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Andy and Cooper were deployed to the 9-1-1 dispatch center. There, they sat and comforted the dispatchers, all moms, who had been dealing with calls from children at the school.

And Cooper doesn't judge. He doesn't care about politics. He is there to comfort anyone who needs it.

Andy and Cooper are also great at triage. Working together, they can spot individuals who may need more structured help and inform the mental health specialists on the scene.

In Cooper, we see the result of thousands of years of co-evolution between dogs and humans, which built a relationship in which we both display empathy. Some may argue that dogs, because they are dogs, cannot be empathic. Watching a canine crisis dog work or when your own dog sits on your lap after a tough day is proof enough of the behaviors associated with empathy. It's the dog-human connection. Dogs need us, and, yes, we need dogs.

I asked Andy why he volunteers for what must be one of the most difficult and heart-wrenching vocations. He told me that he grew up on a farm and loved animals. In his seventies, after a successful career in journalism, he was driven by finding a way to help and give back. I wondered if Cooper had the same motivation. To help, to be there for individuals in need?

Cooper is now eleven, gets tired, and needs time to decompress at the end of the day. After an illustrious career, he is close to retirement. His heir, Huck, a four-year-old Golden, will soon step into Cooper's role after some more training.

Finally, when Cooper sleeps and dreams, his paws twitching, is he dreaming of people he's helped, the comfort he's given? I like to think so.

Hersch’s latest book, “Dog Lessons: Learning the Important Stuff from our best Friends” is avaliable at bookstores and online.