News & Events

Washington Navy Yard / Pearl Harbor Shootings

Description: We were sent an email message at 10:22p Wednesday, "The active shooter incident at Pearl, a NAVSEA organization, is emotionally impacting Navy Yard employees who survived the shooting in 2013. I have a request for comfort dogs on Thursday. Is that possible?". We had responded initially and lots of times after the shootings at the Washington Navy Yard. So we know the "drill" for security, access, parking, lay out of the building, likely work schedules, etc. Wanting to respond as quickly as possible, we rearranged our schedules for the next morning, ran down, and spent three hours on site. Our assigned escort, Jorge, was great. He is in their on base Wounded Warriors Program. Their plan was to announce having a conference room set aside for supportive counseling, staffed by their counselors, and we were to wait there with them. I asked if we could have Shellie and Emma stay with their counselor, in that conference room, while Jorge took the Bear and me to roam the halls, and duck in and out of cubicles. This worked great. We interacted with a LOT of people. We returned to the conference room, where their staff decided that approach wasn't working, and she was going back. It approaching lunch time, I had recommended that we set up in the hallway outside of the lunch room. That drew a LOT of people. We had worked both of these approaches over the years, and always had great success. They wanted us/our teams to return. This week. Next week. As always, they are delighted to see us and our dogs.