Piper’s Training Underway at Warren County Attorney’s Office

As the Director of Victim Services at the Warren County Attorney’s Office, I work with victims and witnesses of crimes in Indianola and other nearby cities in the county. My boss is County Attorney Doug Eichholz, and he recommended looking into the research on taking on a therapy dog in our office. Once we decided to move forward with the idea, things moved quickly. For an office that is trauma informed, this was the next step to providing the best services possible to victims and witnesses.

Once we were ready to commit to a therapy dog, we found Piper. She was the calmer of two puppies we had to choose from and started her training at around 16 weeks old through Dog Training Elite. After committing to Dog Training Elite, we were excited to learn that Perry Community School District was also using them.

Piper’s Training

We started Piper’s training by introducing her to various people and different sounds and textures. At work, everyone was instantly in love with her, and we worked on getting over puppy issues like potty training and figuring out boundaries in the office. Overall, she had a smooth transition and loves coming to work now. She lives with me, and I’m her handler at work, so she’s usually with me at the office. If I’m in a meeting she can’t attend, she’ll stay with another team member. We have several offices set up with cots and other training items so other team members can also work with her on her training during the times when I’m away.

We meet with an Elite trainer every Friday and then spend the next week working with Piper on whatever skill(s) we learned in that session as well as the skills learned in previous weeks. We’ve worked on her first command, which was “come.” She mastered that quickly. Then we worked on mastering staying on her cot until she was permitted to leave it. Most recently, we have worked on "heel” and “sit,” focusing on staying in the sit position for up to three minutes, with distractions and other people around her. We had to take a few weeks off while I had a jury trial, but she’s done well with her daily training.

Since Piper is still training, she doesn’t sit in on every meeting we have with victims and witnesses. But because Piper loves to interact with people, when she can be with victims, it’s a positive experience in an otherwise negative circumstance. And while the plan is to focus on Piper for now, if we ever felt the need to bring on another therapy dog, we would look at options to get a second one.

Piper Off the Clock

When Piper’s not in training mode, she just gets to be a regular puppy, running around, playing with toys and visiting friends. We do her training both at home and at the office. She knows when she gets a command, she must follow through with that, but she also just gets time to play and be a puppy, too.

Choosing a Therapy Dog

For other businesses out there considering a therapy dog for their office, I would recommend it. You can get therapy dogs that are fully trained, if needed. We decided we wanted to train Piper ourselves, so we had that relationship built with her as she was growing up. I would encourage people to do their research, investigate available training models and decide who they will train with and what their goal is with a therapy dog. For the Warren County Attorney’s Office, seeing Piper as a court service dog in the courtroom is our goal, but that is a higher level of training so it’s something we’re working to make happen in the future.

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