There is little time for firefighters to process the scenes they witness while on call. The smell of burning wood and plastics. The cries from injured people. By the time they get back to their fire station, they have to head back out to another call.
“We have to snap back and be ready to go right away,” said Haili Conn, a master firefighter with the Fayetteville Fire Department for six years. “We don’t have time to be sad.”
GRIFFITH, a 2.5-year-old-black Labrador and the newest member of the department, hopes to provide relief when firefighters have some downtime, even if it’s only for a few minutes.
As the department’s first crisis response dog, GRIFFITH is trained to identify and mitigate a person’s stress and anxiety in emergency situations like natural disasters and shootings. Crisis response dogs have therapeutic benefits, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. A peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that the dogs lessened “subjectively experienced stress and anxiety” after a traumatic event.
“He kind of gives you an outlet to just go and clear your mind and not think about the call anymore,” Conn said. “You just get to play with him. He’ll come up and he’ll jump on your lap if you want. He’ll cuddle with you if you want. He can also sense if you’re sad and crying, and he’ll just come up to you without asking.”
GRIFFITH will spend his days at Fayetteville Fire Station 5, where he already has a bed in the truck bay so he can immediately greet firefighters as they return from calls.
GRIFFITH goes home with Conn after her shift, but any firefighter or fire station can request a visit from the dog.
The fire department got GRIFFITH through the paws4people Foundation, a nonprofit that trains and places service dogs throughout the country. The organization has placed hundreds of dogs in North Carolina, including at the Wilmington Fire Department.
Paw4people hopes to bring two more crisis response dogs to the Fayetteville Fire Department by June 2026. Shannon Coyle, a paws4people program manager, said the organization is waiting for the right dogs to complete their training.
“Sometimes our folks want to talk to a chaplain. Sometimes they want to talk to peer support. Sometimes they don’t want to talk to anybody, so these dogs are another tool in the toolbox,” said Assistant Fire Chief Adam Ferguson.
Ferguson said getting GRIFFITH was over a year in the making. As soon as Kevin Dove became Fayetteville’s fire chief in March 2024, he began pushing for a crisis response dog. In June 2024, fire officials visited the Wilmington Fire Department and met one of its crisis response dogs, JETHRO, and were sold on getting one for their firefighters.
With funding from BowenStrong, the Fayetteville Professional Fire Fighters Association and the Fayetteville Firefighters Benevolent Association, Ferguson hopes that GRIFFITH and the two other crisis response dogs coming soon will help ease the stresses that come with being a firefighter.
“We know that our folks are number one. They’re our biggest asset,” Ferguson said. “We want to take care of them, and the PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] and the mental issues that come with doing the job.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.