 Hi, I'm Cori Rickert and I'm a captain with the Santa Rosa Fire Department. I'm also the peer support coordinator for the Behavioral Health Program for the Santa Rosa Fire Department. And I am here to introduce our first therapy dog, Maverick. Maverick is a Labrador with a little bit of golden retriever. He is very stoic when he is working, so he's just a good, good dog. He's here mainly to help firefighters through not only just the daily stressors, but also all of the traumatic incidents that they experience, the, you know, the parts of humanity that we really hope that the community doesn't have to see, firefighters are seeing. Scientifically, the dog is able to sense the low blood sugar. Low blood sugar is similar to how a dog can sense stress. When your cortisol levels rise, the dog is able to sense and smell that rise of that stress chemical, and then they're able to engage with you. Currently we have two trained handlers, and we have the first of hopefully two dogs coming our way, and Maverick is our first. We have a six month training till we graduate, and that's going to be part of our bonding. So they'll assess us monthly with check-ins weekly to find out how we are doing as a team, and if we're meeting the agency's needs and his needs. He goes home with me so that he has an actual off time. So when we're on duty, we're both on duty. When he puts his best on, he's very much on duty. When we go home, he plays with my daughter. He plays with my other dog to get along, and he is back to just being a puppy. He fits in so well. He's so used to being adaptable to different situations. Petting the dog for 10 to 15 minutes will actually lower your cortisol levels and increase your serotonin. So we're able to actually change some of that like biological chemistry of stress and bring it down and bring up those happy chemicals in the same process. Maverick's role is to help the peer support team engage with the firefighters, find them what they need, give them an outlet. Kind of breaks up the day because he's super cute, he's got fluffy ears. So it changes, you know, your perception on how your day is going, having something just positive for positive sake come in the door.