'Comfort dog' to help church, community heal
Doey-eyed with long blonde hair, "Ladel" lights up the faces of fifth-graders at St. Matthew Lutheran School as soon as she walks into the classroom.
The attraction is instantaneous.
Kids huddle around the 7-month-old golden retriever and gush over her for a few minutes, forgetting all about their studies, and ideally, their worries as well.
Ladel is the newest member of St. Matthew Lutheran Church and School, and the star of the Hawthorn Woods church's new comfort dog ministry.
"Her job is to comfort people and to let them pet and talk to her," said Dana Yocum, the school's technology director and one of Ladel's handlers. "When she's here, she's amazingly calm. You cannot pet this dog enough."
Ladel lives with Yocum in her Mundelein home where her inner puppy is let loose to run around the backyard or chase tennis balls.
"But once the vest is on, she knows it's time to go to work," Yocum said.
Comfort dogs are trained to help people cope in crisis or disaster situations and often used for therapeutic purposes at nursing homes, hospitals, with special needs children and by counselors.
"No other church that we know has it, especially among the Lutheran churches," said the Rev. Ronald Moritz, St. Matthew's pastor. "As the dog becomes more and more visible, especially on Sundays, people just are very supportive."
St. Matthew's adopted Ladel to be available for the needs of parishioners and students at the school who may be distressed, but also for the entire community. She will be introduced to local police and fire departments for use in emergency situations.
Ladel was donated to the parish by Addison-based Lutheran Church Charities, a national ministry with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Its goal is to put a comfort dog in every church in northern Illinois that wants one.
"St. Matthew's is actually our first church that we're unveiling the program at," said Tim Hetzner, president of Lutheran Church Charities. "First, we have to make sure we have a good match with the dog and the people in the congregation. These are service dogs. They are unique in the aspect that they have to be very social with the people that they are serving in the church and out in the community."
Hetzner said a few churches have already expressed an interest in getting a comfort dog.
Lutheran Church Charities trained a comfort dog for residents of Lutheran Home in Arlington Heights.
The group currently is training four comfort dogs, including Ladel. The three others are used occasionally in area parishes, and for emergency response such as after the campus shooting at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Hetzner said.
"We saw the value of what a dog can be used as in a disaster response situation," Hetzner said.
NIU officials allowed the dogs access to the dorms and student cafeteria.
"It was so popular that the students requested the dogs again," Hetzner said. "They've asked us to come back again for the anniversary."
Hetzner came up with the idea of using comfort dogs in church ministry after the NIU shooting, "because every church has people in nursing homes, hospitals, or shut-ins."
"We are encouraging the church to set up a day a week where people can set up an appointment with the dog for 15 minutes to a half-hour," he said. "They (the dogs) are magnets to people."