VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Life is good when you’re in the company of a good boy, and if you’re in a high-stress job, like the first responder field, sometimes all you need to reduce that angst is a little four-legged friend. That’s why the folks over at the Virginia Beach Volunteer Rescue Squad have implemented a new dog therapy program for their volunteers.
“Sometimes you have a bad shift and sometimes you lose a couple of patients, and that sort of thing weighs on you,” said Evan Old, an EMT with the department.
Old joined the department when he was just 18, during the COVID-19 pandemic. A high-stress job for someone so young. He says he loves the new program.
“It makes a real difference in the day-to-day shift. It makes a difference in the way we provide patient care and it makes things easier for everybody,” Old told News 3.
The promo started up in February of 2023, when paramedic, Taylor Jones, noticed how happy first responders got when they met a new fur ball out in the field. So Taylor decided to look into the possibility of getting therapy dogs for the department.
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“I thought if we got this much happiness from seeing a dog on the streets, how much happiness could we have if a dog is riding around in a zone car with us?” She said.
So now, dogs like Apollo, the one you see in the video above, not only provide mental health resiliency to the providers but also tag along in the aptly named Doggo-One Car, to provide support to workers during active incidents.
“He {Apollo} does something called de-pressure therapy. So he’ll lean into someone when it's a stressful situation and try to absorb some of their anxiety,” said Erin Strickland, who trains Apollo.
Obviously, the concept of providing therapy dogs to patients is not new, but providing them to the responders themselves is. It’s not just Apollo though. Since the program was started, the number of dogs has skyrocketed, going from 3 to 13. They range in size, from small and fluffy, to big and dopey. Plus get this, they all have their own trading cards.
“When we first got this program going I heard directly from the responders that they didn’t know that anybody really cared about them, and they felt really cared for by their department,” Strickland told News 3.
Around five to eight shifts are scheduled throughout the month for various therapy dogs to meet with EMS providers, firefighters, and ER staff.
