Golden Retrievers Coax Uvalde’s Kids Back to School

"We get invited, we show up, and we let the dogs do their work." So says Bonnie Fear, crisis response coordinator for the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dog Ministry, which sent ten golden retrievers to Uvalde, Texas, site of a school shooting in May.

As parents dropped off their kids this week at schools in the Uvalde school district, some students did not want to even get out of the car. The sight of the golden retrievers on campus coaxed the wary children back to school.

“There was a lot of hesitancy and anxiety about getting out of the car and going into the school,” Fear told CNN. “So we placed the dogs outside, and I do believe that that did help some of the kids see that dog and go, ‘OK, well, I'm going to go pet the dog.’”

Kids hugged it out with canines on campus lawns, in hallways, and in the counselor’s office. The 10 dogs will support eight schools in the district for the first three weeks of school.

Some of the dogs were already familiar with Uvalde, as the Ministry had dispatched eight pups to the scene in the aftermath of the tragedy in May. The charity's K-9 unit launched in 2008 with four dogs; today it has expanded to more than 130 dogs across 27 states. Their comfort dogs have been to Newtown, Connecticut after that school tragedy in 2012; to Orlando, Florida in 2016 following the Pulse nightclub shooting; and to Parkland, Florida where a high school was shot up in 2018.

Donate to the charity here to help cover the canines’ travel expenses.

Photo credit: Lutheran Church Charities