Miami's Helping Hounds

There was a time when Miami-Dade (Florida) firefighter/paramedic Shawn Campana, captain of Station 31, wasn’t feeling quite right emotionally. Of the 31 active and retired members of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue who had committed suicide, she had experienced 6 of them, and her job was starting to take a toll.

To deal with the symptoms, she adopted a greyhound rescue dog, Charlie. Having an animal companion worked so well for Campana, she believed using canines might help others in the department. 

A 2017 white paper from the Ruderman Family Foundation found more US first responders took their own lives than died in the line of duty. They are affected by mental health issues such as PTSD and depression 5 times more than civilians.

After a 3-month pilot study, Campana spearheaded a program 6 years ago to help mitigate and manage the damaging effects of occupational stress experienced by responders, such as PTSD and suicide.

“I want to be able to provide a dog to every station that requests one and qualifies,” says Campana, on special assignment to build the program. She is currently training 6 service dogs. 

Stress Modulators

The program’s team, which started with Campana and Charlie, has grown to 11 handlers. Campana runs the program with firefighter/EMT Howard Brown. They are assisted by firefighter/paramedic Lucianna Genova, who has peer-support certification.

Dogs are utilized three ways. The Response K9 team—a component of the department’s peer support team—accompanies their handlers in peer-support defusing. Station-based dogs serve as crew therapy. And Campana also trains service dogs for personnel battling mental health issues. 

The dogs are provided by Dade County Animal Services. Campana looks for dogs with balanced temperaments and no skittishness or excitability. 

Crisis-response canines provide services for group or individual sessions after an incident as well as large or extended incidents such as the June 2021 Surfside condo collapse, where dogs were stationed at the pile for the USAR crews, the medical examiner’s tent, and the homicide tents until the incident was finished. 

Every team available was utilized—the demand was high. 

Back at the station dogs can be present before and after every call, serving as a “built-in stress modulator for crews that get to see the worst of humanity multiple times a day,” says Campana.

“In a group situation after a tough call, that’s usually when the whole peer-support team gets called out, including the canine. Before the meeting starts they’re already calming everybody down and helping create camaraderie and [establishing] that this is a safe space if somebody wants to share.”

Changes in emotion produce pheromones, which can be smelled by the dogs.

“They are expected to alert—do a gaze or present themselves to be petted—as our bodies release oxytocin and favorably modulate our hormones,” Campana says. “This has the effect of calming the person. The dogs can form connections by body memory and mirror neurons.”

Everybody Loves Charlie

Campana is often contacted by fire and police organizations seeking information on starting similar programs. 

“I tell people to ensure positive reward training—no force—with a dog that has the correct temperament and then slowly acclimate the dog to the environment,” says Campana.

A big mistake many make is not being able to read a nontrained dog’s body language and expecting the dog to be perfect, she notes.

Shift environments with many moving parts and the dangers present in a stationhouse need to be addressed. Certification is a must. 

To address administrative concerns regarding liability and training costs, Campana became a dog trainer through the Animal Behavior College. 

“There are crews with allergies or phobias [and concerns about] safety and advocacy of the canines, which we address with policy and guidelines and behavior assessments every 6 months,” she adds. “Certifications provide liability insurance.”

Campana says Miami-Dade Fire Rescue is one of the few programs to utilize rescue dogs. The longer training it takes to work through behavior issues is worth it, she says.

Charlie, 10 years old, was the program’s first trained canine. Campana is training a new dog, Navouu, to take the torch from Charlie.

Genova has witnessed the dogs’ positive impact. 

“We run a lot of calls, get exhausted, and have sleep deprivation. Men and women get grumpy at the station—you’re with someone for 24 hours. When the dogs come to the station, it changes the whole energy,” she says. “It makes life much more tolerable, especially when you come back from bad calls.”

Brown noted the department had a station where members weren’t communicating well, but things were transformed after Charlie’s arrival. 

“They had a common interest,” he says. “Everybody loved Charlie.” 

Brown notes when the dogs are in the station, “it’s like being home, where people roll around on the floor with the dogs and play fetch, completely forgetting the stress of the job.”

Calm Amid the Noise

There’s solid medical evidence to back up the effectiveness of such programs, including therapy and service dog programs, notes Campana.

“We’re still using words like comfort, relief, and connection,” she says. “That’s where the response canine certification comes in. Now we’re using words like resiliency and post-traumatic growth.”

Brown says his reward comes in seeing the realization in the stations that “there was somebody in the administration who cared enough to authorize a Response K9 team to serve their needs, as well as the love and acceptance of the canines at the stations, which tells me we’re doing something really worthwhile.”

For Genova one of the most monumental moments with the dogs came at the Surfside collapse site. 

“Charlie called me out and was right up next to me,” she says of the dog sensing her emotions. “Charlie was huge for me at Surfside, and I saw how huge those dogs were for the guys coming off the pile. They’d just kneel down and give the dog a hug. Those were some of the best moments I’ve ever seen. It was amazing how calm those dogs were during the noise.” 

For those seeking to start similar programs, Campana advises to do a lot of research and reach out to other programs that have been successful.

Program success has lined up with research, notes Campana. Personnel with access to the dogs call out less, reducing sick hours used. 

“In my case many symptoms went away the first year I had my service dog, [and I realized] I did not need to kill myself,” says Campana. 

“I see how well a service dog helped me build my foundation as a person and start engaging again in my home, society, relationships, as a person, and definitely as a firefighter. Now I get to help other people who are in that same position realize suicide doesn’t have to be an option. Watching my coworkers have the same breakthroughs in their own lives makes all the work worthwhile.”  

Carol Brzozowski is a freelance journalist and former daily newspaper reporter in South Florida. Her work has been published in more than 200 media outlets.