While some say school safety hinges on guns, cameras or alarms in classrooms, Mark Gomer and Kristi Schiller think specially trained dogs should take point in preventing violence in schools.
Gomer’s for-profit company has sent a gun- and drug-detecting dog to patrol the halls of an Ohio high school, while Schiller is launching a nonprofit in Houston to give schools the trained canines for free. Their programs are still in their infancy, so questions remain about dogs that can distract, scare or send kids into sneezing fits. But they think they can cultivate their ideas to help schools across the country stay safe.
Gomer’s first full-time safety dog is a year-old Dutch shepherd named Atticus, who reported to duty this school year at Oak Hills High School in Green Township in southwest Ohio.
The dog trained at the school before the summer break, said Gomer, co-owner of American Success Dog Training in Bridgetown, Ohio. As part of the company’s School Protection Dog program, Atticus learned on the job about marching bands and school bells and the thunk of books hitting a locker.
Gomer, who has trained about 8,000 dogs over 20 years and has three children in the school district, suggested the dog after 20 students and six teachers were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Atticus has won over students, parents, teachers and district Superintendent Todd Yohey, who initially worried what people would think of him spending $10,000 on a dog.
Gomer has talked to a lot of parents and faculty, and they are saying it was money well-spent, he said.
He said the dogs would have to be extremely social to deal with students’ initial excitement.
“Kids are going to be all over those dogs,” Trump said. “There are concerns to work around, but with the right dogs and right handlers and the right policies and procedures, they should be very beneficial.”
He said the dogs encountering a gunman would be a benefit, but the relationships the kids build with the dogs and handlers and the sense of well-being they create will probably be more lasting and life-changing.
The dogs might be a distraction in the beginning, but they will become part of what students expect to see when they go to school, Trump said.
“There is so much these dogs can do, and they’re always coming up with new ideas,” said Ted Dahlin, a Harris County, Texas, constable’s deputy who serves on the K9s4COPs board of directors. “If I were going to pick a school to make trouble, it would be one I knew didn’t have a dog.”
