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Holden Police Officer Holly Doyle spent 20 years on the job before finally getting a canine partner. What she originally pictured was a “bite dog” used in criminal matters, something like a German shepherd. What she ended up with instead was Cruiser, a cuddly Labrador retriever trained specifically for calmness rather than force, a comfort dog.
As a school resource officer, Doyle said Cruiser has completely changed how students respond to her presence. “When I first started into the schools, just me without a dog, the kids were like, ‘Ooh, why are the police here? What’s going on?'” she said. “Now, it’s a completely different story, they get really excited when they see us pull in. And I don’t think I could’ve done that by myself.”
Cruiser and the handful of other comfort dogs already working in Worcester County, Massachusetts are about to get considerably more company. Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early is putting a $1.6 million federal grant toward helping local police departments acquire, equip, and train additional comfort dogs. Three years ago, Doyle had to fundraise herself just to cover Cruiser’s costs, now that funding is available countywide, and she’s hoping more school resource officers will be able to get dogs of their own.
Doyle said the benefit extends well past schools, into community policing more broadly. “I think that law enforcement in general is trying to show that we’re humans too,” she said. “When people see me walking around with him, even the ones that might not like us, they still can’t say anything bad about Cruiser.”
More than a dozen comfort dogs from across the county turned out on September 15, 2026 for the DA’s official rollout of the program. Among them was Franny, an English Labrador with the Harvard Police Department who splits her time between comfort work and search duties. “It’s the best job I’ve had in 27 years of policing,” said her handler, Officer Tim Schaefer. He noted that a lot of departments still don’t fully understand what dogs like Franny actually do, which includes “friendly find” work, helping locate people with Alzheimer’s who’ve wandered off, as well as sitting with autistic students during moments of crisis. “If there’s dysregulation going on, we’ll oftentimes just sit with the students and shortly thereafter they’re petting the dog and they’re back to a calm state of mind,” Schaefer said. “It’s kinda magical, to be honest.”
According to Early’s office, comfort dogs can help reduce anxiety, support recovery from trauma, and even assist with substance abuse prevention, and they’re described as particularly effective with kids who’ve experienced domestic violence. “That resource officer with that dog is the first one to give that kid some assurance that it’s going to be OK,” Early said, “especially when you’ve got a situation where their home should be safe, and now it’s not safe.”
My thoughts: What sticks with me here is Officer Doyle’s line about wanting a “bite dog” twenty years ago and ending up with something that’s done far more for her work than that ever could have. There’s a real shift happening in how police departments think about what a canine partner is actually for, not intimidation, but making officers approachable to the exact people who need them to feel safe, kids in classrooms, people in crisis, families going through something frightening at home. A federal grant funding more of these dogs isn’t a flashy headline, but multiplied across a dozen departments, it’s the kind of quiet infrastructure change that ends up mattering in a lot of individual, difficult moments.
Source: WBUR
