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Among the flowers and signs lining the sidewalk at Annunciation Church, there were also dogs. Six golden retrievers cuddled with children and adults alike as they grieved, days after a mass shooting devastated the community.

Kristen Winn watched in tears as her daughter Emily, a student at Annunciation, sat on the curb with her arm wrapped around 

“I just really appreciate that they're here,” Winn said of the dogs. “This really helps.”

Megan Lennon and her daughter, who live nearby, brought flowers to the site and sat with Gideon and another retriever, Mary, who traveled from Janesville, Wisconsin.

“It’s overwhelming, walking up here,” Lennon said in tears. “I had no idea how big it was going to be, and just being overwhelmed with emotion and grief, being drawn to the dog was a really, really calming distraction in the moment.”

That distraction came at a time when Annunciation was still reeling from a mass shooting Wednesday that killed two children and wounded 18 others.

The retrievers are part of LCC K-9 Comfort Dog Ministry, an outfit based out of Lutheran Church Charities near Chicago. The ministry has 130 dog teams stationed around the U.S. that travel to communities in crisis from the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, to the recent fires in California.

Gideon and his team are the only one based in Minnesota, stationed at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Bloomington.

“What we’ve found over the years is that as the people pet the dogs, they start to talk and they start to relax,” said Pam Lienemann, one of Gideon’s handlers. “Then we know we have helped begin the healing process.”

Lienemann says Gideon visits about 18 Minnesota senior living communities as well as Normandale Community College and Fairview hospitals. 

“But when a crisis like this happens and we pull dogs, we clear his schedule, and we are 100 percent here for this community to help them,” Leinemann said.

When news of the shooting broke, Lutheran Church Charities 

deployed five additional dog teams to Minneapolis

 from the region. The dogs arrived Wednesday night in time for the vigil at Academy of Holy Angels.

“Once the invitation comes in, then our promise to folks is that we will have boots and paws on the ground within 24 hours,” Leinemann says. “This time, we topped ourselves. We had boots and paws on the ground within 12 hours.”

Lutheran Church Charities president Chris Singer, on site at Annunciation Church, said the dogs restore a sense of safety.

“One of the things I’ve watched time and time again is a child who sits down next to a dog, maybe has never said a word about what they’re feeling or what the fear is that they have,” Singer says. “But they begin spending time with the dog, and pretty soon they start sharing some of those feelings, and it’s a really great release for them.”

Handlers Joann and Tim Schwan traveled with the retriever Hagar, 6, from her home base at Faith Lutheran Church in Appleton, Wisconsin. They say the comfort dogs receive 2,000 hours of training to stay calm with people who are grieving or in crisis.

“They feel how soft she is and how loving, and she looks so soulfully in their eyes that they can tell her anything,” Joann Schwan said. “They open up to her.”

The comfort dogs will return to Annunciation Church on Saturday. Then they will attend worship Sunday at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church.

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Annunciation Catholic Church and School shooting

Alex V. Cipolle

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Six golden retrievers were on hand to comfort students and parishioners at Annunciation Church, days after this week’s deadly shooting. The retrievers are part of the K-9 Comfort Dog Ministry, which responds to communities in crisis.

Six golden retrievers were on hand to comfort students and parishioners at Annunciation Church, days after this week’s deadly shooting. The retrievers are part of the K-9 Comfort Dog Ministry, an outfit based out of Lutheran Church Charities outside of Chicago to respond to communities in crisis.

‘Paws on the Ground’: Comfort dogs help heal at Annunciation Church

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