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Hadley Kemp, 3, and Landon Nugent, 8, of Virginia Beach, Va., pet Crisis Response Canine Gunther handled by John Hunt during a Courthouse Community United Methodist Church prayer service in Virginia Beach, Va., on Monday, June 3, 2019. When a crisis occurs, these agencies reach out to their teams to see who is nearby and available to help.
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Several agencies provide certified crisis response teams to community and government organizations. You may have seen footage of canines greeting students returning to campus after a school shooting, or heard about crisis response dogs helping communities recover from acts of terrorism. Teams of certified crisis response dogs and their handlers also aid individuals affected by man-made disasters. These dogs assist people struggling with the aftermath of natural disasters, like hurricanes, fires, floods, epidemics, and tornadoes.
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What Are Crisis Response Dogs?Ĭrisis response dogs are trained to handle stressful, crowded situations so that they can help people remain calm in disasters. Not all therapy dogs have the temperament to be crisis response dogs. Crisis response dogs are different from therapy dogs and emotional support animals (ESAs), but the distinctions can get confusing, so we’ve broken it down below. These findings prove that dogs bring comfort to the people they interact with, but what exactly is a comfort dog? The term is typically used to describe a type of dog known as a “crisis response” dog. Is there anything more comforting than the reassuring touch of a dog? Scientists have discovered that interacting with animals boosts levels of oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin in our brains, and can even improve our immune system.
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