Holly Ryan took Ranger, a therapy dog, to her hometown of Newtown, Conn., to help out after the school shootings. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)





But all of them were glad to see her dog.

"I knew if I was going to go, I wanted an extra layer of being able to help and support," she said. "Who am I to just walk into a school, to attract kids to me, to provide comfort? But if I have a dog with me ..."

Technically, Ranger isn't her dog -- they just work together. Ryan runs a school program in which troubled middle school students help train dogs to build skills. Two-year-old Ranger is one of her most trusted participants.

He comes from PawPads, a nonprofit organization in Savage that trains helper dogs for a variety of roles.

Ryan has long been a believer in the benefits of animal helpers. She wrote her master's thesis on animal-assisted therapy at a time when the concept was very new.


And she knew from working with her own students the value of having friendly, furry backup in emotionally charged situations.

So she asked Linda Ball, executive director of PawPads, if she could borrow a helping paw for the trip. Ball didn't hesitate, and a few days later, Ryan and Ranger were on a plane.

Ranger, who is close to completing his training, specializes as a service dog rather than a therapy animal. He can operate light switches, open doors, pull wheelchairs and pay at checkout counters. But Ball said his even temperament and intuitive response to emotion made him a good fit for the job.

"He's an old-soul dog," she said. "He seems to sense those who need him. He'll just lean in and relax and let people pet him and start talking with him."

In Newtown, that's exactly what Ranger did. He licked the faces of children who'd been in Sandy Hook Elementary during the shooting. He nuzzled against firefighters as they talked about the events of the day and the brutality of the crime scene they'd witnessed. Many people wanted pictures with him.

Jeff Bender, a professor of veterinary public health at the University of Minnesota, said dogs like Ranger act as "a social lubricant" for people working through trauma, helping lighten the mood and break down barriers.

"The dog oftentimes opens up a degree of communication that would not have occurred readily," he said.

The benefits are physical as well as psychological: Studies have shown that helper animals can lower blood pressure and cholesterol, he said.

The communication works both ways: Through heightened senses and sharp attention to visual clues, dogs can pick up on emotions -- or even imminent medical emergencies like seizures -- before humans do.

At times, Ranger, normally reserved and unimposing, would go out of his way to focus his attention on certain people, only for Ryan to learn later that those people had particularly harrowing experiences or connections to the tragedy.

And unlike even the most well-intentioned humans, Ranger and other dogs will never waver in the darkest moments.

"It's called 'unconditional positive regard,' " said Sharon Theimer, the Mayo Clinic's news editor and co-chair of the clinic's Caring Canines program. "Dogs do not view people as patients or view people as psychiatric patients. They view people as people."

Theimer and her Australian shepherd, Baxter, are one of a half-dozen therapy dog teams that work with patients at the clinic. Like Ranger, Baxter is a hit -- Theimer has a "big hug!" command to let him know when he's about to be embraced out of the blue.

And like Ranger, he sees a fair number of people bare their souls.

"You might not be comfortable crying in front of your coworkers," Theimer said, "but a dog is not going to judge you."

Ryan got a helping hand before the trip from Kari Hastad, another Lakeville school psychologist who helped raise money for the trip.

"It just touched my heart that this was her hometown," said Hastad. "Something about that tragedy was just really personal."

And Ryan got a phone call from Kate Becker, an Oregon woman who works in a hospital chain with a golden retriever named Amber, the first dog trained by PawPads.

"I basically reminded her to take care of herself and the dog," said Becker, who works with dogs to help emergency responders deal with on-the-job stress. "These dogs that go on these calls need to be solid in mental as well as physical condition. A lot of stress is passed onto them."

That's one reason Ball and Ryan picked Ranger: He's adept at turning his focus quickly from a patient to a tennis ball to unwind.

Ryan herself didn't unwind until after returning from the trip. She still has many close friends in Newtown and didn't fully process the weight of the tragedy even as she walked among them, in part because she was intent on staying productive.

"My intent was not to go back and be sad," she said. "My intent was to go back and do something."

After running on fumes for days, she got home, told her husband about what she'd seen and heard and broke down in tears.

As she recalled the story a week and a half later, Ranger, sitting at her feet, perked up and leaned his head against her lap.
