The Valley Ambulance Authority has a new, floppy-eared, extremely food-motivated recruit with a first-of-his-kind mission for the Pittsburgh area.
Goose, an 11-week-old yellow Labrador puppy, is believed to be the region’s only Critical Incident Response Team K-9.
He will receive a year and a half of training in the same way other K9s tasked with sniffing out drugs, bombs and electronic devices do, but his nose will target cortisol, a chemical emitted by humans when they are stressed.
As a member of the Ambulance Authority, Goose’s job will be to arrive on scenes and provide real-time analysis and aid for his fellow first responders by seeking out the most stressed workers and helping to calm them down before they move on to their next call.
It’s a pressing issue in Allegheny County, where more than a half dozen first responders have taken their own lives in the last couple of years. One of them worked in the 911 call center, which is part of the Ambulance Authority’s service area.
“We’ve seen a lot of horrific items,” Chief Brian Herskovitz said. “That next call you go to is going to be grandma with a stubbed toe. She’s going to need you to be as empathetic as possible while that previous call could’ve been a child fatality.”
A recent anonymous study by New York State found 38% of first responders reported experiencing PTSD symptoms. Of those surveyed, 16% reported having suicidal thoughts.
More than three-quarters of respondents said they couldn’t recognize when they needed help.
A K9 like Goose is not cheap, especially for the nonprofit Authority. Herskovitz showed off the specially rigged SUV that was designed with multiple redundancies to alert staff members if the temperature inside the vehicle becomes too high.
However, Herskovitz, a former 911 call taker, said he believed it was worth it, and hoped that other agencies seeing Goose’s impact would invest in their own team members.
Goose has already been on several scenes even as he’s still learning to sniff scents, signal to his handler and work in patterns. He will also be introduced to a variety of scenarios like hardware stores, trains and farms to help him limit distractions.
Herskovitz said he expected Goose to work for five to eight years after his training was complete.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW