Good girl on carrier

Who’s a good girl!?  That lovely looking blonde is Sage, a 3 year old yellow lab who will become an official asset on board the Gerald R. Ford, and is a therapy dog on loan from Mutts With a Mission.

Sage, a 3-year-old female yellow Labrador retriever, is the first dog to deploy with a ship’s crew through a pilot program meant to address mental health and resiliency.

The Virginia-based nonprofit Mutts with a Mission trained Sage and loaned her to the crew for the deployment. The dog will comfort sailors and is trained to help them cope with operational stress. It’s part of what is dubbed, in typical military-speak, the Expanded Operational Stress Control Canine program.

Cmdr. Genevieve Clark, the chaplain for the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, will serve as Sage’s primary handler and underwent 120 hours of training with Mutts with a Mission. Three other sailors have volunteered to help care for the canine during the deployment, which could last around six months.

Navy Times

Now, we need to draw a line here: there is a lot of controversy over people claiming their snake/parakeet/dog/wallaby being “emotional support” animals – mebbe they are, mebbe they are just a symptom of a self-centered over-entitled whiny personality (I wouldn’t want to cloud the issue with my own personal view on that.)  But official therapy and service dogs are actually tested and trained for their jobs. A therapy dog is supposed to be trained and pass the American Kennel Club “Canine Good Citizen” test to show they are obedient, more or less focused, tolerate strangers well, etc.  Service dogs are more highly trained in specific tasks for their owners, such as seeing-eye dogs, detecting grand-mal seizures or anxiety attacks in their nascent stages – I am told their training can take upwards of two to five years.  Quick sidebar – the first seeing-eye dog, a Golden (the world’s greatest dog) was renamed Buddy – its  original name was  Kiss.

Ahead of this deployment, Mutts with a Mission brought Sage onboard Ford several times “to visit with the crew and become more accustomed to life on a warship,” Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Dawn Stankus told Navy Times. Based on those visits, Mutts with a Mission “has no concerns with the dog remaining on the ship for deployment.”

Still, Sage’s handlers and the ship’s senior medical officer were all trained in canine first aid, the ship is stocked with basic canine medicines, and the Army Veterinary Services is on standby for telemedicine calls if needed, Stankus said.

The Navy will evaluate the effectiveness of this program during Ford’s deployment and determine whether future carriers or other ships might deploy with dogs of their own. That evaluation will consider the number of interactions between sailors and Sage, whether she increases their morale and willingness to seek out help, and how well she adjusts to life at sea.

Not to say this sounds like a good idea to me, but I’m thinking sitting down with a nice pup after a stressful days, maybe doing some strategic scratching is worth at least a drink or two. Too, I’m prejudiced – if my dogs can’t go to Heaven, I ain’t going.

Hat tip to Jeff LPH for the link.

Category: Navy