Shared Stress, Common Ground: Proven Wellness Lessons from First Responders Beyond the Slopes (Part 1 of 2)

Wellness isn't just a buzzword—it's a critical component of performance for those who respond to emergencies on the mountain and beyond. This revealing conversation, recorded at the Pacific Northwest Division's annual 2025 Convention, brings together an extraordinary panel of experts from across the first responder spectrum to share hard-won insights about building resilience in high-stress environments. (Part 1:2)
 
This Keynote Panel's conversation brings together specialists from crisis response dog teams, fire departments, mountain rescue, police, and the FBI to share their hard-won wisdom about building resilience in high-stress environments. Their insights reveal that while different first responder groups may speak different operational languages, they share common challenges in maintaining mental wellness while performing demanding duties.

https://www.hopeaacr.org HOPE Nationwide Canines. 

Phone: 877-467-3597 Teams - Respond at No Charge

Seattle Fire Dept: email Kristin.Cox@seattle.gov 

SeattleMountainRescue.org & email: info@seattlemountainrescue.org

Bluegritwellness.com & email: ewtung@gmail.com

That wraps up Part 1 of our special convention edition of Patroller Chats.

We hope you found inspiration in the stories and strategies shared by our incredible panelists — real-world wisdom from those who know what it means to lead and serve under pressure.

As we continue the conversation around wellness, resilience, and innovation in our patrol communities, remember: taking care of others starts with taking care of ourselves and each other.

Stay tuned for Part 2, the last half of the Keynote Session where we continue with the amazing Q&A.  

Chapters

• 1:58 Convention Introduction and Theme
• 4:08 Wellness in First Responder Communities
• 7:18 Expert Panel Introduction
• 11:42 Trust and Leadership in Wellness Programs
• 17:42 Making Wellness Programs Fun and Engaging
• 20:17 Building Different Approaches for Different Teams
• 24:30 Questions About HOPE and Crisis Dogs
• 32:48 Creating a Culture of Support and Trust
• 38:10 Mission Dogs vs. Recovery Dogs

Transcript

Jodie: 0:59

Welcome back to Patroller Chats. Today's episode will be a little different. Think of it as a unique kind of chairlift ride. No need to worry about raising or lowering that bar, but we do invite you to sit back, relax and come along for the journey. We're excited to bring you inside our annual convention for the Pacific Northwest Division of the National Ski Patrol. For those who may not know, the NSP is made up of 11 divisions across the country. Our division, the Pacific Northwest Division, or PNWD as you may have heard us call it, is one of them. The PNWD includes five regions and covers all of Washington, oregon and parts of Idaho. This year's convention was hosted in Everett, washington, by our Northwest region and the theme Patrol Pioneers a celebration of innovation, resilience and leadership in our mountain communities.

Jodie: 1:54

Now, when you think about it, you might be wondering are we just stepping back in time? But no, we're really remembering is the richness of our history. Since 1938, the National Ski Patrol has held to a powerful creed. Who knows it before? I say it, that's right service and safety. Being a first responder isn't just about helping guests or people we encounter on the slopes. It's about showing up in our everyday lives too.

Jodie: 2:21

While patrolling, many of us have likely noticed a growing awareness over the past 5, 10, 15, and maybe beyond in years. That awareness is centered around wellness. You may have heard it referred to as psychological first aid, stress first aid or simply wellness. You may have heard it as PFA, sfa, and here's the key point. This isn't new and has been around for decades. Some of you might have been aware of it. When the military began developing formal wellness and mental health strategies back in the 1960s, they laid the groundwork not just for military members, but for many others in high-stress roles such as EMS, police, fire, search and rescue and, yes, even ski patrollers. There are also not as well-known but equally vital members of our broader responder community, such as crisis response dogs. Just like any high-stakes job, those roles come with built-in stress, and when you're in a position where people count on you, staying on top of your game and supporting each other becomes essential. That's why, at this year's convention, our keynote session focused on that very theme Lessons in motion wellness insights from our frontline partners.

Jodie: 3:41

We welcomed a panel of experienced responders located here in the Northwest, from EMS, police, fire and Search and Rescue, who shared real-world strategies for wellness, lessons learned from their working in high-stress environments and how they have woven resilience into their team cultures. They offered powerful takeaways for ski patrollers in leadership cultures. They offered powerful takeaways for ski patrollers in leadership, from those just starting to build wellness programs to those looking to evolve and strengthen what they already have. It was an opportunity to learn about the challenges these teams faced and how they adapted and how they brought their people together around a shared commitment to wellness. So why am I telling you all this? Unfortunately, the recording of the session started a bit late, so you won't get to hear our panelists introduce themselves firsthand or the very first part of that segment. But without further ado, we'd like to introduce them to you.

Jodie: 4:39

First we had Raquel Lackey and Ruffles representing HOPE AACR, which stands for Animal Assisted Crisis Response. Raquel and Ruffles are also members of the Seattle Mountain Rescue Team, bringing a unique combination of crisis response and mountain rescue expertise, along with the calm and comforting presence that Ruffles and other dog teams have specifically trained for, and Ruffles excellently delivers. Next was Kristen Cox, who leads the Seattle Fire Department Wellness Program. Her insights into building department-wide wellness initiatives were invaluable. We also welcomed Doug McCall, chair and one of the founding members of the Seattle Mountain Rescue Wellness Program. He shared how their team developed wellness practices tailored into unique demands of mountain rescue work.

Jodie: 5:31

Joining us from law enforcement was Commander Eric Tung of the Kent Police Department. Now Eric is also the host of the Blue Grit podcast, a wellness-focused series where he shares stories and strategies from the front lines of public service. Please check them out. We're honored to have Dr Shannon Meyer, a clinical psychologist with the FBI, who is also a member of the Hope Crisis Response Team. Her expertise in trauma resilience and canine-assisted support added a powerful clinical perspective to the conversation. In addition to Ruffles, we were very fortunate to have three additional Hope Dog teams circulating through the audience during the session, offering quiet support, demonstrating the grounding, calming presence these trained teams bring not only to critical incidents, but to community events and wellness efforts as well. Now that you know a bit about our panelists, let's listen in.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 6:34

I think that's huge.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 6:35

I'll just go in with the good doctor said is I think it's recognizing that when we talk about wellness, when we talk about culture, when we talk about leadership, they're all intertwined and they're kind of the same thing. Right, you want people to be well so they can do the job they want to do to the best of their abilities for the people out there that need it. Now, if you don't have buy-in at any of those levels, it doesn't work. Right, if you don't have trust and legitimacy at the, at the ground level, the, the, the folks out there doing the day-to-day stuff, then they're going to write it off.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 7:02

And there's fear element, there's distrust, organizational, like hey, it's on paper, but don't actually do it. Or if the leader is saying, hey, do it, but you don't see the leader doing it or buying into it, then it's kind of for not. And so when I hear that question, I think quickly about distrust and that being the obstacle of fear. And so how do you build this at your level, leaders at all levels? Just build some positivity and good attitudes at your level.

Kristin Cox, Seattle Fire: 7:30

And that's where it starts. I'm going to jump in also. I agree with everything that both of you have said, and sometimes leadership is busy doing other things or can't necessarily be enticed into being a champion for wellness, and I'm talking about holistic wellness. I think most first responder and volunteer agencies that do rescue work really are interested in physical fitness, because you know you can't do the job unless you're physically fit. And sometimes the mental aspect of having your mind in the game isn't quite factored in, or if it is, it's kind of discounted a little bit. But occasionally leaders need to be convinced that that is part of the big picture and you can still do really good work even if the leaders aren't quite convinced yet yet.

Kristin Cox, Seattle Fire: 8:25

And again it's along with what Shannon said is finding somebody with passion and then can be a champion for a program. But then it's about building relationships and showing people, enticing them to participate in volunteer kind of resilience activities that are fun. I don't know about you. I've worked with first responders my entire career and they will not do anything unless it's fun Okay. So finding ways to make it fun is, to me, the key to getting people to be on board with it, and then they experience the benefits and the impact of how this can up their game, not just in the work that they do, but then, bless you, it has a whole side effect. That is building community, which I think most of us are probably encouraging in any way, shape or form we can, but also with their family members and their off work or off operational scene time.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 9:20

I'm going to jump in on the fun part of that. I think that's the niche that Hope has with the dog, because no matter what you guys are facing or any of the first responders that we work with are facing, it's always okay to smile at a dog and bring you back to that center as you try to process what you're working through. That we can shore you up to get you back out in your game that Eric talked about. I know many of our teams. It's about walking the talk and making sure that we, too, take breaks when needed so that we can be completely present to interact with you all to help you deal with what's on scene.

Doug McCall, Seattle Mountain Rescue SMR: 10:04

Yeah, I think the only thing I would add there from you know, just from the volunteer organization perspective, it doesn't always it doesn't start quickly, it doesn't like say like, oh, we're gonna have a resilience program and suddenly the next day you've got it and everyone's, you know, embracing it. It it does take that, that person, the passionate person, and then if you can get a couple other people involved, that then takes a little bit off the passionate person and then that can start to grow within the team. The one thing that I think I don't know if that's been great about having Ruffles, bungie and formerly Pickles on the team was it's very subtle, it's not like in your face, like face like oh, tell us how you're feeling. Or you know, you just went through some really bad shit.

Doug McCall, Seattle Mountain Rescue SMR: 10:58

What's, what are you doing now? It's, it's you just have the dogs there and then and they're they're not in your face necessarily, but they're just there and you can. You can engage if you want and you don't if you don't want to. So just kind of that. I guess it's like boiling the frog. You're just a little bit. If you throw it in all at once it's going to jump right out, but it gets there over time.

Kristin Cox, Seattle Fire: 11:23

I'm going to jump in on that because I'll give you an example. At Seattle Fire, when I was with the Coast Guard Department of Homeland Security if you can believe this did a pilot project on the impact of mindfulness on operational readiness. Can you believe that? And as part of that, I trained as a certified as coach through University of California San Diego Center for Mindfulness in a particular kind of mindfulness that was built for Olympic athletes originally, and the people in my certification class were Navy SEALs, secret Service agents, olympic athlete coaches and me. Yeah, anyway, so that was the pull, was that it was for kind of badass operational people that needed to be at the top of their game.

Kristin Cox, Seattle Fire: 12:09

When I came to Seattle Fire, I offered one class and a few people participated and I talked to the rescue team our kind of, you know, swat fire and they were really interested in the mental performance aspect and so they asked for a class.

Kristin Cox, Seattle Fire: 12:24

We held it at our joint training facility and while we were all in class for three days, a whole bunch of other people that were at the joint training facility were like what are you guys doing here? Right, because they saw them in yoga clothes and doing a little bit of meditation and other practices, and so they started telling them. Well, from that, the director of training for all of Seattle Fire said I want all of our training personnel to get that class. So we did another class at request on that, and from that people started going back into operations doing this thing and everybody's like, well, I want some of that. That's pretty cool, right. So it does start really slowly. It's word of mouth and it's about showing that there's specific things that you can be doing to up your game, not just at work, but also at home.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 13:13

And I think that you did a really great job of that and also the interagency training of that, having been mental health coach with Kristen for MPEEC but inviting police, and then also we've got Department of Transportation and others, because what we're all facing is the same thing. I mean, we all have baggage, we all have families, we all have life. That's going on and what you guys are all doing is you're doing that, and then you're volunteering on top of that, which is another layer, and so the more you can take care of yourself with these little nuggets that's just as simple as brushing your teeth every morning. That's just value-add icing on the top right.

Dr Shannon Meyer, FBI Clinical Psychologist & HOPE: 13:59

I'd like to jump in because this is one of my soapboxes, so forgive me, but I think what we're also talking about is knowing your audience and being sure that you speak the language, operation and otherwise, of the people around you. We talk about first responders as kind of a homogenous group and let me tell you they are not. The differences between, for example, law enforcement and fire are profound and we use some of the same language with them, but the same language doesn't work across all domains and so when we think about establishing a program in our own backyard or with our own people, it's gosh again and we use, we throw these words around like cultural competency and what does that mean and what does that mean? But you need to have someone who knows what ski patrol is in and out and what the day is and what the mood is like.

Dr Shannon Meyer, FBI Clinical Psychologist & HOPE: 15:27

Even opinions towards mental health are profoundly different between fire and police. Whether they're willing to go away inpatient is profoundly different. So, really understanding and partnering with someone who knows you from the ground up and, if they don't, who's willing to learn with you, who's willing to head up to the mountain or hang out at whatever that looks like, but the real importance of speaking the language, the language of performance, is something that we all understand, but we may understand it with different intonations or different emphases, and that's just something to keep in mind as you plan or grow or enhance your own programs in your own areas.

Jodie: 16:21

Just to touch basis a little bit on that. I'm going to go back just a little bit when there are differences. We also have so much that's similar. We encourage all ski areas, the resorts, the patrollers to interact and have a collaboration with EMS, with the law enforcement, with the fire department, with your lift operators, with the groomers and having all that interact Because we can have a common. There is differences, but we have a lot that's common Because we can have a common.

Dr Shannon Meyer, FBI Clinical Psychologist & HOPE: 17:02

There is differences but, we have a lot that's common. Fundamentally, we are dealing with all of the same issues, with all of the same things, and we come from a culture that is very similar, but there are just some flavors that we need to be aware of to best serve our folks.

Jodie: 17:17

But thank you, jodi, for emphasizing that, and that's where we also we have been saying from day one, and I ask on you guys, how has you know? We ask people to take some tools to get some basic understanding, but we know that what works at one spot, another spot, another area, et cetera, is going to go no, this isn't going to work for us at all and we have to adjust a little bit. And that's where we encourage the basic foundation of learning some of this and then running with it. And we've got, hopefully. Oh, I just lost him. Where'd he go? Well, there's Joe. Yeah, casey, casey left the room. He left the audience. I'll tell you.

Jodie: 17:59

So we all know Casey Carlson, mount Ashland room. He left the audience. I tell you. So we all know Casey Carlson, mount Ashland. We got Joe Farrar back here, our outdoor risk manager, and we have Eric Brittenham from Bachelor Andy's been involved with us from the beginning and Shelly. So we've been trying to show a lot of different examples from the areas Mount Spokane and each one has gone a little bit different, but we also have our basic foundation going from that. Dr Heinkel is going to be also walking around the room. We want to take a minute to see if people have some questions for these guys that we've been talking about something that's come to your mind before you forget it. Just raise your hand. We'll bring you the mic and we can ask John, are you raising your hand?

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 18:47

Okay, good morning, good morning.

Jodie: 18:56

It's on. You just got to put it right next to your mouth there, oh great. Okay, you just got to put it right next to your mouth there, oh great.

Speaker 8: 19:03

Okay, so how does the partnership between HOPE and those different organizations, how does it actually start? What does it look like when there is an incident? Do you guys just like show?

Speaker 8: 19:15

up? What are the logistics of that?

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 19:18

That's a great question. So it can happen a bunch of different ways. Whatever works for the organization.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 19:28

I'm kind of at a disadvantage here from the other part. So I am the regional manager for HOPE in the Pacific Northwest, but actually I think my core team that I go to for resiliency is with me here on stage, team that I go to for resiliency is with me here on stage, and so for Seattle Mountain Rescue, if I start with that one, I am on team with them. So I have a DEM card, just like you all, and I hang out with team and I don't need to be called coming in or out If I'm called by Kent or Seattle Fire, it's just a text message. Hey, raquel, we've had something come up. Can you be XYZ? When do we need you? Right, and it's not always me.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 20:09

There's 42 members in Pacific Northwest area. We have over 300 members nationwide and if you call a green shirt, a green shirt better have the same training whether it's in Washington State or Washington DC. They're not going to self-deploy, they're going to be trained in incident command. They're going to ask you who do we report to? What was the incident? Tell me, some super secret stuff? Is there anything that you want us to be looking out for stuff? Is there anything that you want us to be looking out for? Not that we're going to come back and report on anything, but just to have that mindset of what it's going to take to go in so that I can help staff that incident to the best of my ability.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 20:55

Raquel, there's a phone number yeah, there's a 1-800 number or frequently Ruffles. Ruffles' business card has her cell phone number on it and also her email. She does type and I take dictation, although because she's slow and doesn't have thumbs. If she were able to drive I'd be just kicked to the curb.

Jodie: 21:20

So it does sort of sound familiar. What do we have for our OEC? Our sled training, it goes, that's National Ski Patrol, right when it's all across there. So when they're talking about their regions, it's like our divisions to sort of be a little bit, show you the similarities. And for the Pacific Northwest, that's their region, which happens to align exactly with our division Washington, Oregon, Idaho.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 21:46

I'm going to stress with you it's all about relationships and it's all about building that level of trust before the incident happens.

Speaker 9: 21:54

So I have a quick question, so that 800 number that you mentioned, I'm right here, so I'm from Oregon, so if I call that number I get when you guys.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 22:06

Yeah, that number, that 1-800 number, is staffed by a person. She's actually the president of HOPE nationally and I frequently get a call from her saying I just got off the phone with Oregon. This is what the incident is. We need to staff it with teams. Can you please make contact? And then? So you've got people in the phone with Oregon. This is what the incident is. We need to staff it with teams. Can you please make?

Speaker 9: 22:22

contact and then. So you've got people in the Portland Oregon area.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 22:28

We need more dogs, so I'm going to implore you to like, go find help me find some dog teams that can actually do this work A little.

Jodie: 22:36

PR plug for this. They are recruiting and looking for that, so any of these the green shirts can tell you more about it in conversation. They're going to be here through lunch.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 22:59

So how does someone find that number? Is there, like cards you're handing out, or jody's doing a really good job of pushing out the 1-800 number for all of national ski?

Speaker 7: 23:04

patrol. I was thinking for anyone who wanted it, but thank you, yeah, yeah, test. They have a website too. Where are you going to have them so people can pick them up, I guess?

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 23:13

There's going to be a table too. Okay, because they're going to be interacting and walking around.

Speaker 8: 23:22

I'm interested in knowing how you built the culture with your different groups. Probably not unlike you, patrollers tend to be kind of a stoic bunch that want to present that everything is going great and they're super strong. But we all know that what you show up dealing with in the morning just is another layer of what you're going to deal with when you encounter something on the hill. So how do I mean? You mentioned fun things and whatnot, but how do you create that culture where people are comfortable opening up and sharing and getting the support?

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 23:58

that's for you in Seattle Mountain Rescue, not to speak for Doug, but I mean he can add on to this. We do it very stealth early. So Seattle Mountain Rescue has a lot of young bucks out there and they know it all right. They're in their twenties and so one of the best things that I can do to build their trust is show up with really yummy, warm food in the morning to make sure that they are properly fueled with protein instead of gummy bears before heading out. And then that is conversation for out on the training field or out on the mission.

Doug McCall, Seattle Mountain Rescue SMR: 24:45

Yeah, and it is pretty stealth in some ways.

Doug McCall, Seattle Mountain Rescue SMR: 24:50

And you know, having, as I said saying earlier, having the dogs there, it's very subtle, you know, for the team to be there and building that foundation of you know communing, having breakfast together or coming back after a mission, and you know having pizza together or coming back after a mission and you know having pizza just sitting around, whether it's at the, at the base, at a, at our building, just the opportunity to kind of decompress, if that, when the dog, when ruffles and bungee are there, it's great because while it looks like they're trying to steal your pizza, and they might slightly be ruffles, but he's good at that, but they're coming around and they're, they're there, you can, you pet them and you know there's there's a lot of that, that general stress that just goes, goes away, but it's getting the pulling that team in and like, yeah, if you went straight to their face and say this is what we're going to do, it's a little bit.

Doug McCall, Seattle Mountain Rescue SMR: 25:54

There is that stoicism of like, well, we're mountain rescue, we can take care of it. Or I'm sure on the police side there's, you know, strong front and you can just kind of, you know, have the dogs to smile at, because they're always smiling, which is, and Ruffles' butt is just like swings like crazy, as you'll see later, but yeah, it's fun.

Kristin Cox, Seattle Fire: 26:31

I'm going to jump in also that we're really lucky in Washington State the first responder peer support communities. If we have somebody who is trained and designated by the agency as a peer support person, we enjoy privileged communication just like a lawyer, and so that confidentiality is really important and that can extend though any time that you have any kind of support organization or program in your agency or your organization. It is it. The foundation is always going to be confidentiality about whatever's going on or not, and do so with complete confidentiality is really important. It builds that trust. One of the things about that is I tell people that I'm training as peer support people. Your confidentiality and your trust building starts before you talk to somebody. They're watching you talk to other people or watching you talk about other people and that's where they're judging whether or not you're going to be a confidential resource that they can go to and be vulnerable. So it starts again with connection and building relationship, but it's before the incident and it's not about an incident or stress.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 27:50

It's just about you as a person. Yeah, I think to answer your question, where do you go? Do you move?

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 27:55

He didn't like our answers.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 27:59

It's not just me, Okay so it's not literally, not a couple of things that we've mentioned before, the panel's mentioned before. It's relationships and knowing your audience, right. And so we think about different groups amongst your giant group. Like, yeah, we're not homogenous, so same for cops. We're frequently a stubborn bunch, we're frequently a stoic bunch, we're frequently salty bunch.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 28:21

Sounds familiar.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 28:23

Right. So I think there are a lot of similarities. But how we approach something like, hey, let's talk about stress or talk about burnout, let's talk about compassion, fatigue, that might be entirely different. For one crew, like a day shift squad, that's like really senior and like your experience or your accolades don't mean anything.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 28:41

But if you have someone in the community or in that group that is open and willing to share because you've demonstrated relationship and trust, and they are kind of the self-deployed, decentralized source, that's like, hey, you should pay attention to this therapy stuff, because had I paid attention when I was 20-something I might have saved myself a couple of divorces. Those are real conversations that are really impactful to the 20-something-year-olds. And then it's just knowing your audience too, because for some younger folks at my department what I say carries some credence because I recruited them and I learned about them, there's a personal relationship. However, for others, when I promoted from sergeant to commander, I'm like not a human being anymore. So it's just knowing that and knowing where your advocates and allies can be throughout the organization to kind of help spread that message. So the context is right for that group.

Dr Shannon Meyer, FBI Clinical Psychologist & HOPE: 29:30

And like physical health, when we start talking about how multifaceted physical health is, a wellness program is also multifaceted. It shouldn't be just something you plug in after a critical incident, because that's just not how it works. That's not how relationships work, and so if you've got a peer support person or a trusted mental health person that can come and bullshit after a long shift, who can again start building those relationships and start modeling that this wellness and stress management isn't so woo-woo-y bull..., that it has some real relevance, and I think that's also a piece of what's important.

Speaker 7: 30:21

So I think you began to touch on it just now. But my question was what's the interaction between the recovery dogs and the mission dogs? You know that I assume Mountain Rescue uses dogs, that on occasion the police have a dog use, and so you have mission dogs that have a job, a different type of job where it's not a lot of interaction, and you have the recovery dogs that are brought in for a lot of interaction. So the dogs kind of are the tip of this in that shift in interaction, but also and I think Eric started to touch on it the relationship in the wellness program between the mission use and the recovery use and how those interplay.

Jodie: 31:12

I think you've got several of you. You're going to have to answer that one.

Doug McCall, Seattle Mountain Rescue SMR: 31:16

Yeah, I think, from my perspective, the dogs that are on the mission, they're working to locate an individual. The ruffles does not go into the field. Ruffles is at base and generally is there when we get back from the mission. So you know, maybe a search mission where we have the dogs that are out there, the King County Sardogs, I think they have air scent and human remains, dogs and they're out, you know, doing their thing. We all go out and do our thing, search, but when we all come back, what I think is great you know about the program is that Ruffles and our resilience team is there for everyone back in base and on some incidents they're there for the family who may have shown up at base to whose family member is either missing or has had an incident, and so the ruffles, the resilience dogs are, will stay in. Just basically they'll stay in base and there's a separation between, you know, the, the working piece. And well they're, they're both working, they're just working in different spaces.

Doug McCall, Seattle Mountain Rescue SMR: 32:35

They're job classifications. I would say, just like a mountain rescue team is different from a dog team, you know you've got a technical piece aspect of it and then you've got, you know, the air scent piece that we don't have.

Jodie: 32:52

Raquel, did you want to add anything in that You're fine, if you don't.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 32:59

The Hope Dog teams stand aside and support when they come out of the field or when you're not in the field and I think Doug did a good job about explaining. While they're all in the field, you guys are all dealing with somebody on scene. I'm usually behind the scenes shoring up the family or spending time while they're waiting for their loved one to come back or being called One mission. I was called to Mount Rainier with the dogs because they had to do a body recovery up at Mount Rainier.

Raquel Lackey & Ruffles, HOPE & SMR: 33:34

We all know that dogs are not allowed in the national parks. However, because that team was having such an intense and yucky recovery, the rangers knew they needed to break through and have support for them as they dealt with the family or had to communicate with the families of bringing that soul back. So that's kind of what goes on If we train our dogs properly. They don't want to interact with any other dogs. You notice the dogs that if you saw them interact or come in, ruffles isn't going to Leo. Ruffles is going towards the person right and so she's trained for that smell of the human, what we smell like and who needs our help.

Eric Tung, Kent PD & Blue Grit Podcast: 34:22

One thing that I'll add in is, as we're having this conversation, is we talked about introducing socializing and building that trust before the event. Right, and so in the times that I've called a raquel and team to come to the pd, it's actually not been in crisis. There's kind of these micro crises all the time and then it's like the death by a thousand cuts, and so part of the strategy was just to introduce these friendly, familiar faces so that when we do have a huge incident and a debrief and there are people in tragedy and trauma and mourning, these are familiar faces and familiar furry paws. But in actuality it was more than just familiarizing. There'd be a lot of people that got really excited because the dogs are here and people love dogs A lot of people do and then there's other people that generally don't smile, just around strangers or in the hallways or at all, and then they would gravitate towards the dogs or they'd just be kind of there and they'd kind of look down and then they kind of start petting the dog and then they'd be down on their hands and knees and then they'd be talking to Raquel or you know, one of the handler, drivers, chauffeurs that we have for like 15, 20 minutes about their day, about their week, about all this other stuff, which is like another version of maybe hiding the medicine or just socializing it and then just see where it takes off.