Therapy dog Maverick, described in the Washington Post as “a 150-pound European Blue Great Dane,” on Nov. 6 was named the 2023 American Humane Hero Dog at a major event in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Maverick is a local boy. He lives just down the interstate in St. Robert with Kelly Brownfield, manager of the Fort Leonard Wood United Service Organizations Club.
Maverick is also a working boy, whose job is to comfort soldiers and their families. Washington Post writer Sydney Page reported in her news story about the Hero Dog award that when soldiers die, Maverick is there at the funerals to comfort their relatives. He also comforts soldiers when one of their colleagues dies.
“His go-to move is placing his paw on the person he’s seeking to soothe,” Page wrote. And she quoted Brownfield as saying “A sign of a good therapy dog is a dog that always wants to touch you. He just has a sense of knowing what people need.”
Maverick also goes to school to provide some calmness to pupils. He is a big ole boy, “literally a gentle giant,” Brownfield told the Washington Post, but “his whole aura about him is calming.”
Kids love the great Great Dane, because of that size, Brownfield said.
“He is the perfect size for everything that we do. He is literally their rock; they can lean on him, and he is there for them,” she told the Washington Post. “The one thing about this breed is that they have the heart to match.”
He is six years old and was one of hundreds of dogs nominated in five categories for the award for heroism: law enforcement and first responder dogs; service and guide or hearing dogs; therapy dogs; military dogs; and emerging hero and shelter dogs.
September was the month when the category winners were chosen. Maverick won the therapy dogs category.
Maverick and Brownfield have been a team since 2017. They met in 2016 when he was a 12-week-old puppy.
He wasn’t her first therapy dog, and she spent the first year of his life training him and raising him to fill the role her previous dogs had filled.
In addition to the work escorting children to military funerals and helping men and women in military service cop with trauma, injures and stress, he also has supported service members on suicide watch.
He is also a major comfort to Brownfield herself. She has cancer and will complete chemotherapy in the spring. She says having Maverick with her in her community work provides plenty of balance, keeping things in perspective, reminding her to be grateful.
Susan Hinkle, Rolla, who certifies therapy dogs and service dogs in this area, knows Maverick and owner Brownfield well. In fact, she went with them to West Palm Beach, Florida, for the award ceremony.
Hinkle said that although Maverick is now a national celebrity with his name and picture in the Washington Post and all over the world wide web, he remains a humble counselor and therapist in Pulaski County.
“He is the top therapy dog in the country, and he beat out thousands of dogs,” Hinkle said, “but he is still a therapy dog of this region.”
A member of the Alliance of Therapy Dogs Inc. and the local Paw Prints Therapy Dog Group, Maverick stays busy doing a lot for the USO and veterans, Hinkle said.
And she hopes he will be a role model and inspiration for other dogs (and their owners, of course).
“We need more teams,” she said. Yes, more dogs and their owners are needed to fill therapy dog team roles.
There are teams working diligently at Phelps Health, Missouri S&T, Rolla Public Schools. Some visit nursing homes. The therapy dogs visit patients and staff at the hospital and nursing homes; students at S&T. Elementary school kids read to the dogs.
“We are trying to get a program for therapy dogs, working with CASA in courtrooms,” Hinkle said. CASA is an organization that works with children in foster care. They need comfort and a good therapy dog can provide that.
Other organizations and services have also requested therapy dog visits, but right now, “the need far exceeds the number of teams that have been tested,” Hinkle said, describing the need for more teams as “dire.”
Fourteen of the two-member comforting teams have left this work either because the human component retired, or the canine member passed away.
“And the need keeps growing but I haven't had teams come in and get certified for a while,” she said.
You don’t have to have a Great Dane like Maverick to be involved with this program. Your dog doesn’t have to be a certain breed or be a certain size.
“We’ve got a little Corgi working in the program, so we’ve got all sizes,” Hinkle said. There are no requirements for full-blooded breeds or papered registrations. Your dog doesn’t even have to have obedience training. Your dog doesn’t even have to be really active. The Alliance of Therapy Dogs seems to think that even a couch potato kind of dog can be a good therapy dog.
I have had some experience with a therapy dog. Once, while visiting the Missouri Veterans Home many years ago with Sophie, a black Standard Poodle and Sophie’s handler/owner, I watched as a veteran soldier got down on the floor with Sophie and petted her for a good 10 minutes. Sophie laid there nuzzling the soldier and loving the attention.
Directly, a nurse told the soldier it was time for his regular blood pressure check. When the soldier and the nurse returned, the nurse said, “His blood pressure was the lowest it has been in weeks. Petting that dog helped.”
Hinkle said that’s pretty common. There’s not much that will lower blood pressure naturally and without medicine than petting a loving dog.
Before we close, here are a couple more things about Maverick.
First, he’s going to be a national TV star later this month. The Hero Dog Award ceremony will be nationally televised on the FYI Network on Thanksgiving Day and on A&E Network on Nov. 26.
Second, Pulaski County USO therapy dog Maverick might have a worldwide impact.
“He is a USO therapy dog,” Hinkle said. “In fact, and this is the glory of a dog, from one dog the USO is looking at starting an international therapy dog program.”
Hinkle said Brownfield spoke at a USO conference ins St. Louis recently, and now the USO leadership is discussing and considering a worldwide therapy dog program under USO direction.
Well, now, your dog might never get to be Washington Post or A&E Network material, but your little one could bring happiness to somebody’s life here in Phelps or Pulaski counties. That’s what matters.
If you’d be willing to get your own little (or big) fur baby involved in therapy dogging, call Hinkle at 573-578-2141 or write an email to her at susan@mopatriotpaws.org.
