Doraville Police welcomes 1st-ever therapy dog

Dorville police are welcoming a new four legged member to the department. His name is Abe. He's adorable. You're going to see him in just a second. But the certified certified therapy dog is focused on supporting employee wellness, mental health and public safety personnel as well. So our Maria Guzman is joining us in Dorville with a look at the new pup. Hey, Maria. Hey, Lise. Good morning. You know, I have the best assignment today because we're talking about Abe. He is a therapy dog. the first therapy dog here at the department in Doraville. I'm going to go ahead and fit my camera so you guys can also meet Abe and also just meet the people who are caring for Abe on the day to day. So there he is, the therapy dog, and I'm going to go ahead and introduce you also to Sergeant Lopez. Sergeant Lopez, you are one of his caretakers. So talk to me first about Abe's role. He's been in the job for about a month. So how is he doing? He is doing awesome. Abe, like you said has been here for a month he is a trained facility therapy dog and what that means he's not a service dog he is trained to work with multiple people he has been incorporated into our peer support program and is working with these officers these dispatchers and all of our staff to help kind of bring them down from some hard calls, help calm them, help them disconnect from some of the hard calls that they process. And it just helps them disconnect. Yeah. I know you've mentioned that you've been able to see officers and how they really engage. Talk to me about your experience. How special has it been for an officer to pet Abe and just see their stress level just decrease. Well, I've been in law enforcement for over 30 years, and I have seen these officers go through some really, really hard times. And I'm seeing these guys and girls walk in after hard calls, after just a lot of call volume. They walk in the door, and you see them stressed out, and they see Abe, and suddenly they're just smiling and they kind of melt when they see him he he's just really bringing some joy to the department for sure and talk to me about his story what was the process on getting Abe certified to be a therapy dog he we applied over a year ago and uh for this facility therapy dog and they go through some temperament testing as puppies making sure they're very calm very friendly uh don't mind the loud noises or disruptions and and uh so he started training at eight weeks through a facility in Indiana and he trained at the until about the nine month mark and then he came to us and Abe was ready to to train us when he got here so we went through some training as handlers ourselves. Lauren over here, she is our Abe's secondary handler. So with a facility dog, you can have multiple handlers. So she can take him around on visits as well. So yeah, he does obedience training on a regular basis just to make sure, you know, we can walk him off leash and so forth and he behaves. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Now stay with us because the next hours we're going to be watching Abe do some of these commands that he's been trained so you definitely want to stick around i'll send things back to you in the studio Maria i think we're in love we could leave the camera on Abe for 30 more minutes and love every second of it so i know they're excited to welcome him to the family there in Dorville Maria thank you so much for the look We'll be right back.