Last week, Paul Soost of Lutheran Church Charities K9 Comfort Dog Ministry brought Peace to Rochelle Community Hospital staff members. Soost matured in Rochelle. He now resides in Orlando and was back in the location for the nationwide LCC K9 Comfort Dog Ministry Conference in Northbrook, Illinois. Peace, obviously, is a 6.5-year-old pure-blooded golden retriever service dog who has actually worked to bring convenience to those that require it for 5 years.
LCC K9 Comfort Dogs react to schools, medical facilities, hot spot
ROCHELLE — Last week, Paul Soost of Lutheran Church Charities K9 Comfort Dog Ministry brought Peace to Rochelle Community Hospital staff members.
Soost matured in Rochelle. He now resides in Orlando and was back in the location for the nationwide LCC K9 Comfort Dog Ministry Conference in Northbrook, Illinois. Peace, obviously, is a 6.5-year-old pure-blooded golden retriever service dog who has actually worked to bring convenience to those that require it for 5 years.
“We went to see the staff,” Soost said of the July 25 see to RCH. “We know that healthcare providers and first responders have very stressful jobs. We wanted to be able to provide some comfort and relief to the staff at RCH. We went from department to department spending time with the staff in each of the areas. Two of the LCC comfort dogs that are more local have visited RCH in the past. We wanted to take the opportunity to bring Peace to them.”
LCC K9 Comfort Dog Ministry began in 2008. It presently has about 130 dogs in 27 states that do what Peace does. The nationwide human care ministry welcomes the nature and abilities of golden retrievers.
On an everyday basis, Soost and Peace will go to schools, nursing houses, medical facilities, fire and police headquarters and anywhere else that they’re welcomed to offer convenience. In times of natural or manufactured catastrophes, Peace and dogs like her are released in little groups or as part of a group to offer convenience on a bigger scale. Rochelle had convenience dogs that pertained to town in 2015 after the EF4 twister struck the location.
Peace and Soost has actually reacted to 3 typhoons, two times in Florida and as soon as in Elberta, Alabama, to offer convenience to households impacted by them. Most just recently, they remained in Ft. Myers, Florida after Hurricane Ian hit.
In July 2021, the set remained in Surfside, Florida after an apartment collapse. Peace became part of a group of dogs there to offer convenience. She and Soost mostly concentrated on very first responders, and consulted with fire and rescue groups after their 12-hour shifts in healing efforts.
Peace was likewise released two times to Uvalde, Texas following the school shooting that happened there.
“We deployed last September when the kids were getting ready to go back to school,” Soost said. “We went for one week and were part of a three-week mission to provide comfort to the students as they came back to school for the first time after the shooting. We were just back in Uvalde in May for the one-year remembrance of the school shooting.”
Soost’s church, Trinity Lutheran Church in downtown Orlando, discovered the LCC K9 Comfort Dog Ministry after the shootings at Pulse bar in Orlando where 49 lives were lost. Soost and his church saw the 12 convenience dogs that pertained to the city for 2 weeks to offer convenience, as they were home based upon their school.
“We saw the dogs and teams in action and were able to talk with and learn from them,” Soost said. “We could truly see the impact that the dogs had with people that were grieving. We wanted to get involved with this ministry. We put in a request to get a dog and Peace came in on July 1, 2018 at 18 months old. I have five members on my team and seven on my ministry team for a total of 12.”
Soost called his and Peace’s work “a real blessing” and said he takes pleasure in assisting to offer a minute of relief for those going through bumpy rides. He said LCC K9 Comfort Dog Ministry likes establishing relationships with neighborhoods that have actually gone through catastrophes and the assistance doesn’t end when dogs and handlers leave.
“At our conference one of our surprise guests was our primary contact from the Uvalde school district,” Soost said. “She had come in to thank the teams that had deployed and just to share a little bit of the progress and the steps they’ve made in recovering and healing. They’ll never be completely the same, but knowing that we’re a small part of their healing and helping them get through on a day-to-day basis is so meaningful and rewarding.”
Soost thinks the work was a requiring him. He remembered a day when he took Peace to a school in Ft. Myers where a trainee’s daddy had actually just recently died.
“We went into the second grade classroom and the kids were sitting in a circle in the middle of the room,” Soost said. “Peace kept trying to get into the circle and I kept trying to slow her down. She walked in between two kids and laid down and put her head on one boy’s lap. I saw the teacher had tears in her eyes, and she said that was the student who lost their father. The dogs just have this natural sense of who needs them. To see that boy smile, knowing the grief and pain that he’d gone through, was so heartwarming and confirms why we do what we do on a day-to-day basis.”
For more info on LCC K9 Comfort Dog Ministry, go to www.LutheranChurchCharities.org or www.K9comfort.org.
