One of Ulster County's latest government hires is about the cutest, most irresistible, cuddly, endearing fellow one could hope to meet. Oliver, by name, will patrol the halls of the county's Emergency Communications Center, where he will be regularly, and as needed, stroked, petted and embraced by his co-workers, the humans who answer the county's 911 calls and coordinate police, fire and medical services responses. Stressful gig for a human; cool gig for an 11-week-old Goldendoodle.

Oliver's job title is “therapy dog” and his job description is to help his co-workers deal with the stress of their work. For this the county is 12 grand out of pocket.

Does it seem far-fetched? Literature on the topic says it is important to note that Oliver and his kin are “therapy” not “therapist” dogs. They are not going to place EMS personnel on the couch and listen to them lament their childhoods. Therapy dogs don't have to. The literature is replete with studies that show dogs and simple human interaction with them improve human mental health, including studies showing measurable improvements in blood pressure and stress hormone levels.

Ulster County's is the first 911 call center in New York State to employ a therapy dog, though it took four years to come to fruition. “There was some discussion at a town supervisors' meeting,” said Ulster County Director of Emergency Services Everett Erichsen. “It wasn't something we could take on at that time. Since then, we've done a lot of research, talked to many companies and other agencies, looked at how they make it work within their 911 center.”

This reporter met with Erichsen, Oliver, and Oliver's designated handler, Emergency Services Dispatcher Anthony McKenzie, in the Communications Center's war room, among an array of video monitors and banks of computers blinking and streaming data. “There's 24 municipalities in the county and a population of about 185,000 people,” Erichsen said. “So every single time you pick up the phone to call 911 – your cat's up in the tree, your house is on fire, you're stuck in your car, loved one’s in cardiac arrest – we're answering those calls. 340-plus calls a day.”

That hectic atmosphere and the traumatic suffering that it regularly addresses make work at the Communications Center extraordinarily stressful – similar to the work of first responders. (EMS dispatchers refer to themselves as “the first first responders.”) This too is well documented in an extensive scientific literature.

McKenzie characterized Oliver as a “proactive” measure. “Right now, our staff is is very young,” he said. “The majority have been here less than five years. It's a stressful job. It's busy. You come in for long shifts, there's a lot of overtime because of staffing and people looking for their time off ... The emergency responder field in general has been reactive — the incident happens, a stressful situation happens, and then we kind of deal with it afterwards. So this is trying to get ahead of problems.”

Oliver hasn't yet started work. In an email, County Executive Jen Metzger's office gave us a status report. “He is going through his weeks of vaccinations now and has been accompanying [McKenzie] to work to get used to different environments. He starts training end of April; he’ll have three or four months of training, and by the end of September should be fully trained.”

“It's a non-judgmental way of therapy,” McKenzie said. “You're not getting a judgment. You're kind of taking your mind off of your current stressor or whatever is on your mind that's bothering you, taking your walk with the dog, maybe throwing a ball or the dog sees something and now you see it, and you're sort of focused on that. You're not focused on the current problem. I'm not saying it takes away your problems. It just gives you that brief moment of a break.”