Burton, a 3-year-old comfort dog in the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, reports for duty

Last month, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office held a swearing-in ceremony for Burton, a new member on its force. He won’t, however, be apprehending suspected criminals, working on investigations or responding to requests for backup. But the help he will provide is just as valuable, albeit in a different way, to deputies and the communities they serve.

Burton is the department’s first comfort dog. His handler, Deputy Kerri Oman, takes the 85-pound, longhaired German shepherd to comfort victims of trauma or to community events where his vest encourages people to pet him, unlike most police canines. Burton is also in high demand among Multnomah County deputies and first responders to ease the stress and emotional toll of their jobs. Oman and Burton join us to share more, along with Darin Campbell, the executive director of Working Dogs Oregon, a nonprofit whose services include training and donating dogs, including Burton, to law enforcement agencies in Oregon.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Last month, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office had a swearing in ceremony for Burton, a new member of the force. He’s not going to be apprehending suspects or working on investigations. Also, he does not stand on two legs. Burton is an 85-pound longhaired German shepherd. He is the department’s first comfort dog. He was brought onto the force to provide solace to victims of trauma and to ease the stress of sheriff’s office deputies. Burton is here today happily sitting on the ground here along with his handler, Deputy Kerri Oman. Darin Campbell is here as well. He is the executive director of the nonprofit Working Dogs Oregon. He trained Burton and donated him to the department. It’s great to have all three of you here.

Darin Campbell: Thank you.

Kerri Oman: Thank you.

Miller: Darin, first. Can you tell us about Burton?

Campbell: Burton is an amazing beastie. He’s an 85-pound West German show line, longhaired German shepherd.

Miller: Show line?

Campbell: He’s a show line dog. His grandfather is actually a world champion show line dog.

Miller: Oh, meaning, a show dog who the judges look at him and say this is a great example of a long-haired German shepherd?

Campbell: Exactly. So he has just gorgeous, stunning looks. I’ll describe him for radio. He has long black hair and he’s just a gorgeous dog, and his temperament and demeanor just makes him perfect for the type of work he’s doing for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

Miller: Well, what was it about his demeanor that made you think he would be a good comfort dog as opposed to a track and capture dog, another role that law enforcement dogs are trained to do?

Campbell: Well, Burton would never be a track and capture dog. He is just too kind. He’s calm. Nothing really gets him to react, and that’s what you need. You need a very calm presence, especially when you’re talking about dealing with people who may be trying to navigate the most difficult time in their life. If you’re talking about victims, you’re talking about first responders who just went through very traumatic incidents, things that typical people can never imagine being involved in and to have that calm presence, that’s just going to be there, present with that individual, that’s what we need in a dog like Burton. He brings it at the top level when it comes to these types of dogs.

Miller: The top level of calmness?

Campbell: Yes.

Miller: Kerri Oman, how did the comfort dog program start at the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

Oman: Well, we recognized the need to amp up our wellness program and dogs being part of that is becoming more and more popular, not just in our metro area, but around the country in law enforcement agencies. And so we had a specific lieutenant who wrote up a proposal and we went to work and here we are like almost a year later. It took a while, but…

Miller: Was there buy in? Obviously, it happened. So there was enough buy-in. But was it immediate? Did folks at the top of the department from the sheriff on down, did they say immediately, ‘yeah, let’s bring a dog in to provide comfort to people?’

Oman: Again, like I said, it was a process. It took a while. I think the idea is always they love the idea of it. Like, let’s bring a dog in, but there’s a lot of work that it takes to get to that point. So I think yes, they were excited about the idea from the proposal initially, it just took a lot of work to get to where we are.

Miller: Why did you want to be a handler for a comfort dog?

Oman: My love of dogs is one of my biggest passions and I haven’t had a dog for a couple of years and when this opportunity arose, I just thought this is like a dream job for me ‒ coming to work every day but bringing my dog with me.

Miller: So, it’s not like… he’s not a piece of equipment that stays in a locker and you go to work and then grab your piece of equipment, put it in your holster and you’re off. So he goes home with you.

Oman: Correct. He goes home with me every night. He lives like a pet at home. He’s my dog.

Miller: And then you go to work together?

Oman: And then we go to work together, yes.

Miller: Does it feel different? I mean, Burton as a pet in the evening and Burton as, I don’t know, a partner in the middle of the day?

Oman: Maybe a little, but his demeanor ‒ like Darin talked about ‒ he’s just calm and relaxed and mellow mannered, and he’s got such a good temperament that he’s just kind of like that all day long throughout the day. I will say when he gets home from work, he’s exhausted and he goes and takes a nap on the couch, but he just comes to work and we go do all the things that we’re supposed to do, and then we come home and he’s out of work mode. I take his vest off and he’s a pet.

Miller: Hmm. So we’ll talk about the work he does. But did you get a chance to meet him before you volunteered or requested that this would be your job? Or was it, you said ‘I want to be a comfort dog handler and I don’t know who my partner is going to be?’

Oman: Yeah, I applied for the position not knowing who the dog was going to be. And then I had the opportunity to meet him before he was actually donated, because I had a meeting with Darin to talk about comfort dogs and their role to kind of prepare myself for our interview process that I had to go through. And I met Burton on that day and just fell in love.

Miller: What do you remember about that meeting?

Oman: We talked for about two hours.

Miller: You and Darin?

Oman: Darin and I, yeah, and Burton laid on my feet the whole time.

Campbell: Until a three-year-old came in. We were at a coffee shop, and the interesting thing about it is that’s the day that I found out Multnomah County was looking for a dog. We had selected the department for Burt and that had fallen through and Kerri, just doing some preparation for her interview, had reached out to us. And so I found out Multnomah County was looking for a dog, so I followed those avenues because I thought that was a great match.

Miller: You had already been training him to be a comfort dog for somebody.

Campbell: Yes.

Miller: But you didn’t realize that Multnomah County was looking for the exact kind of dog you were training?

Campbell: Yeah. The planets aligned.

Miller: What does training for a comfort dog entail? I mean, you’d already said that he had the right temperament just when he arrived. So, what do you have to do to train him up?

Campbell: So it is a giant portion of the training that I do ‒ there’s a lot that goes into it prior to me getting them and we have a huge process ‒ but once I get the dog, it’s all about exposure and experiencing the whole world. So I take them everywhere. We go into Old Town Portland on the weekends when the Portland Police entertainment detail comes in and shuts down the streets. And I will tell you that’s a world of humanity that you cannot recreate in any training type of session.

Miller: Loud? Drunken? Some fights?

Campbell: You get to see everything from drunk college students to the gang element, to the homeless element, to the drug addiction element, to loud bars. All the bars down there let us go in the clubs.

Miller: So the idea is kind of exposure therapy. This is a lot of sensory input. Let’s just expose the dog, in this case Burton, to it and make sure that he stays calm?

Campbell: What I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to get a reaction out of him. I’m trying to see what he’s going to react to, and Burton reacted to nothing and that’s what I want. But I need to throw everything at him because you never know what Kerri is going to come across in any given day on one of her shifts, and you can’t get a dog that’s going to cower in the backseat and not want to come out.

Miller: Does anything stand out from those trips to Old Town or those nights of training?

Campbell: I will tell you, we’ve taken several dogs down there, I think six dogs, I’ve used that as a training ground. People know us now and they look for our dogs. And Burt, when he was training, made a huge impression on people. People seek us out when they go out clubbing. They’re looking for us and they want to see the dog. And I can tell you that you can see people who are on an emotional edge who just needed that interaction with Burt, and it gives them a lift and they kind of have a different hop in their step when they’re walking away. And that means everything to me, and it solidifies what our program is doing. I know what Burt is capable of doing with people who are experiencing trauma and experiencing just terror in their lives, and Kerri gets that opportunity to put Burt in front of them.

Miller: So clearly, he is just as chill as can be right now. He has a naturally, it seems, a temperament just to be relaxed. Do you try to train him to positively interact with people and to calm them down, or is it more that just because he is a fluffy, relaxed dog, he sort of does it naturally? I am just wondering if you can train him as an animal to actively try to help people, or if it just happens.

Oman: So, there was kind of an uphill battle to get him to refocus his attention on somebody else. And so a big challenge for us was teaching him to interact with people, and he’s gotten it. He does a good job now. We tell him to go say hi, and then he’ll turn his attention to whomever we want him to see.

Miller: Oh, so Kerri that is one of the commands instead of roll over and play dead? It’s go say hi?

Oman: Uh-huh.

Miller: What does he do?

Oman: Like Darin was saying, he redirects his attention to whomever I’m directing him to go say hi to, and he goes over there and just gets loved on.

Miller: Where have you already deployed him, if that’s the right word.

Oman: That’s the perfect word.

Miller: Who have you had him say hi to?

Oman: We were called to a school, a grade school that went into lockdown. The principal walked us through 10 different kindergarten and first grade classes and we met every kid in those classes. And I’m telling you, I was having kindergartners and first graders who were in a lockdown school situation where their classroom doors were locked and they couldn’t leave telling me that this was the best day ever because they got to pet him.

Miller: Hmm.

Oman: So that, I mean, what a huge impact [on] these kids. Like, instead of being one of the scariest, worst days of their school experience, they were telling me it was their best day.

Miller: So in that scenario, I imagine that it had gotten to the point where the scene was secured enough, and so you could be called in. He’s not a bomb sniffer…

Oman: Yes, correct.

Miller: … he’s a head-put-in-lapper.

Oman: Absolutely. Exactly. And then most recently we had a deputy involved in a fight and ended up getting a minor stab wound. He got stitched up and went back to the office and called me and said, ‘hey, is Burton available?’ And they had all, all the other members of this unit had all suffered through that incident, and they wanted some comforting. And so we deployed to that office and we spent about an hour hanging out with the deputies there and, oh, my gosh, I have some great pictures from when he was getting loved on by everyone.

Miller: But do you think it’s easier for a police officer, a sheriff’s deputy to say, ‘hey, is burden available’ than it is to say, ‘hey, is there a shrink I can talk to them?’

Oman: One-hundred percent. Yeah. I think that people are just more at ease around a dog. And there’s obviously differences, there’s huge differences in talking to a person and petting a dog, but I think it is a lot easier. And I’ve seen some of the toughest, strongest deputies that I know turn into a ball of mush playing on the ground with him. It’s amazing what that does to someone.

Campbell: But Dave, I will tell you that Burt is a gateway to that interaction with a therapist. That’s one of his roles, is to get somebody to drop their guard down and start opening up. And the wellness programs across the country are designed for that big, bad, tough police officer that’s always got that shield on, to get them to drop down a little bit and be willing to start talking.

Miller: He’s a kind of Trojan dog.

Campbell: Kind of, yeah.

Miller: If you pet him, your defenses go down and then you’re more likely to seek out the professional help that can go deeper.

Campbell: Exactly. And there’s a timing process. So when do you introduce this compared to that, and it’s part of that flow.

Miller: I’ve absolutely agreed with both of you that he is a very sweet-seeming dog who maybe has even fallen asleep right now. I can’t tell if his eyes are open, but I should say that there are plenty of people who might see him ‒ might see a large, 85-pound German shepherd ‒ and be really scared. German shepherds are used for all kinds of crowd control or tracking, or they’re just big dogs that some people just associate with menace. Do you ask people in advance if they like dogs? I was thinking about those kindergartners.

Oman: Right.

Miller: So, maybe they were nervous about the lockdown and then this huge dog comes. Some people may love to be licked. Some people may be terrified about dogs in general. How do you navigate that?

Oman: I don’t force anyone to meet him or be around him, and I can usually tell if someone is uncomfortable and then we’ll start a conversation. Are you scared? Do you want to pet him? He’s very sweet. He won’t hurt you. And we kind of can navigate that individual into whatever makes them feel comfortable. And I know, we did have one student who was terrified, and we just made sure we stayed away. His teacher and him went and sat in the corner and we didn’t go over near him, and that was fine. That happens. There’s people that aren’t dog people and I get it, and sometimes it’s because of a traumatic incident and sometimes they’re allergic or whatever the instance is, and we just navigate that. He does wear his vest that says, ‘Please pet. So hopefully people see that and kind of takes away some of that, well, they’re not going to say please pet if he’s a big, mean, scary dog.

Miller: It doesn’t say that with TSA dogs. It doesn’t say that for most.

Oman: It usually says, ‘do not pet.’

Miller: I’m a working dog, don’t pet me.

Oman: Correct. So we hope that that kind of eases some of the initial, oh big scary dog. But there’s something about Burton that people see him and know that he’s not a big, mean, scary dog. There’s something about him that people just feel relaxed right away around him.

Miller: Darin, so you were able to train Burton up and then donate him, give him to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. And is he something like the seventh dog that you have donated to law enforcement agencies?

Campbell: So he is number 19 overall for dogs we’ve donated. He’s the 10th comfort dog that we’ve donated.

Miller: My numbers are way below. Ok. And all of this is donations. How are you able to do this?

Campbell: Well, I work a full-time job on top of this, but we do get some generous donations from the community that help us pay for all this. Right now, I don’t even know how many dogs we have right now. We have six puppy raisers that are raising puppies for the next generation to come. And I’ve got five at my house right now. So we’re constantly bringing up the next Burton.

Miller: But not just comfort dogs. So what else are you training working dogs for?

Campbell: So we have a program for the track and capture patrol dogs. And then we also do a few veterans/PTSD service dogs. We’ve donated three of those. We like to help veterans train their own dogs. That’s what we prefer to do. But when a dog comes through that we think is going to make a really good fit for a veteran, typically a combat veteran with PTSD, we will do our best to find a good fit for that.

Miller: I understand you’re also doing advocacy work to raise awareness among state lawmakers about working dogs. What are you pushing for and what have you done so far?

Campbell: Yeah. So we have taken some things to the Oregon State legislature. The latest was House Bill 2650 from 2021 which allows for police canines to ride in ambulances. One of the things that we’ve found is that you need three things for a patrol dog to survive a shooting or a stabbing incident, which we see happen all across the country, and that’s first aid training for the handler, a first aid kit, and fast transportation to help. And so we have a first aid class we take all around the state. We donate first aid kits to dogs. And Burt being a member of patrol, he’s got his first aid kit. And then we train the handlers as well as area EMS members on canine first aid. But as far as advocacy goes, too, we look at some of the misconceptions around service dogs and how businesses, associations, schools and foundations treat service dogs. And so we have an educational tool that we take and present to those organizations to learn about what is the difference between a police comfort dog and a therapy dog and a service dog. And it’s an educational tool.

Miller: Kerri, what has working with Burton meant to you personally?

Oman: Oh, it’s meant the world to me. Like I said, I’ve been a dog lover my whole life. I just always wanted dogs, wanted dogs around, and just to be able to see in people in the community, just to see their reaction around him. I have to make extra time for myself when I am going places because I get stopped constantly. What a beautiful dog! May I say hi? Can I pet your dog? I just love it. It’s just so impactful and it’s also helping to build bridges and tear down those walls that people have with law enforcement. I feel like people are more apt to come up and talk to me, a deputy in law enforcement, when I have this big fluffy cute dog next to me. And people stop us all the time and want to chat and it’s great.

Miller: You called this a wellness program at the beginning, that’s the sheriff’s department’s plan to begin with, and the dog that you now have with you every day, you sort of deploy him to help fellow officers.

Oman: Absolutely.

Miller: Is he providing that help to you?

Oman: One-hundred percent. Yeah. I’ve been doing this job for 19 years, so been a while, and he gave me a new spark. Not to say I was burnt out or whatever, but it’s a long time in a career, and I wake up excited and happy to go to work and just there’s a new spark in me for sure.

Miller: Kerri Oman and Darin Campbell, thanks very much.

Darin Campbell: Thank you.

Kerri Oman: Thank you.

Miller: And Burton, thank you as well. Pause (paws). [Laughter]. Kerri Oman is Burton’s handler. She is a comfort dog handler, the first one for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. Darin Campbell is the executive director of Working Dogs Oregon. He trained Burton and donated him to the sheriff’s office.

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