More Police Departments Using Therapy Dogs

Friday, March 10th, 2023 -- 10:00 AM

(By Hope Kirwan, Wisconsin Public Radio) As soon as Officer Ryan Ledvina and labradoodle puppy Cheddar enter the kindergarten classroom, students gasp in excitement.

According to Hope Kirwan with Wisconsin Public Radio, the fluffy, orange-brown pup is only 5 months old. As he makes his way around their circle on the carpet for pets and a few puppy kisses, the students giggle and start up a chorus of "aww"s.

One student asks Ledvina, "Are you an officer?" Ledvina is the resource officer assigned to La Crosse's Northside Elementary School, and Cheddar is his new partner. As the La Crosse Police Department's new therapy-dog-in-training, this sort of interaction is exactly what Cheddar is here to do.

Police departments have been employing dogs since at least the 1960s, when departments used the animals to break up civil rights and political protests. Today, police use dogs to sniff out drugs and other substances, apprehend fleeing suspects and even locate missing people.

But a new generation of police dogs has a different role. When fully trained as a therapy dog, Cheddar will help calm people who are in the middle of a mental health crisis or comfort victims of a crime.

The dog may also help Ledvina and other officers make more positive connections with the people they're meant to serve. As more police departments consider the ways they are responding to community needs, the number of police-employed therapy dogs is also growing.

La Crosse is one of at least eight departments in Wisconsin that added therapy dogs just within the last year. Police Chief Shawn Kudron said the idea came out of staff discussions about how the department could better serve the community.

"We wanted to find a way to bring comfort to individuals who might be suffering, whether that's through victimization, whether that's through maybe a mental health crisis, or just having a rough go of it," Kudron said. "We wanted Cheddar to be able to assist in those situations, maybe help bring a calming nature to the situation so that we as police officers could better help them."

A growing field of research shows that therapy dogs can positively affect a person's mental and physical health. A study published last year by researchers in England found that elementary students who interacted with a therapy dog twice a week had "significant stress reduction following the interventions."

The students' stress levels also did not increase over the school term, compared to their peers in the control group, who "showed significant rises in baseline cortisol levels from beginning to end of school term."

Colleen Dell, a sociology professor at the University of Saskatchewan, studies the connection between humans and animals. She said it's clear that interacting with a therapy dog can reduce stress and improve a person's physical and mental wellbeing.

But Dell said researchers are still working to figure out exactly how that happens.

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