Comfort Dogs Arrive In Boston To Help With The Healing
Lutheran Church Charities near Chicago has sent golden retrievers and their handlers to visit hospitals, schools, and other places where they can bring some love to those mourning the bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday.
"Animals have an uncanny ability … to discern that you and I have sadness and distress," Pastor Ingo Dutzmann of Boston's First Lutheran Church told The Huffington Post. "Rather than shying away from it, they're attracted to it."
"People talk to the dogs. They’re like furry counselors," Tim Hetzner, president of Lutheran Church Charities, told Today.com. “It’s a chance to help bring some relief to people that are shaken up because of the bombings.”
NBC Chicago notes that the dogs are specially trained to interact with people, and each one has gone through almost a year of training to help people in stressful situations.
"They just help people as they process all the emotions they go through in any type of crisis," Hetzner told HuffPo.