Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Terry Pearson of Hooktown Holidays presents a check for $10,000 to Children’s Advocacy Center Executive Director Melissa McLean for the purchase of a facility dog.

When Terry Pearson of Hooktown Holidays toured the Warren County Children’s Advocacy Center in Warren, he was impressed. But he noticed one thing missing.

“The only thing I didn’t see here was a dog of some sort,” Pearson said.

Executive Director and Forensic Interviewer Melissa McLean agreed that it would be good for the center to be able to have a facility dog.

But, because of the cost, it was more of a “bucket list” item than something that was on her short-range radar.

That was until Hooktown Holidays put together a special project to help the center purchase a dog.

Hooktown’s mission statement is specific – “funds donated to Hooktown Holidays go directly into the community to help people who are living without necessities,” Pearson said. Funding a facility dog, no matter how significant the need, was not a match. So, those in charge had to create a separate funding stream.

“I started going out and soliciting funds to provide this animal,” he said.

After about a year — interrupted like everything else by the COVID-19 pandemic — Pearson, on behalf of the Hooktown Holidays Children’s Advocacy Center Project, presented a check for $10,000 to McLean to purchase the dog.

The next step is finding the right fit, McLean said.

The dog, specially trained in a number of ways, will provide comfort to the children, already on shaky emotional ground, who have to talk about their experiences and sometimes testify in court in order to prevent someone from causing further damage to them and others.

McLean has been working with the Courthouse Dogs Foundation. Facility dogs are generally golden retrievers or Labrador retrievers bred and trained for a calm and submissive temperament.

“We’re not just looking at a dog that’s going to hand out here every day,” she said.

“If kids pull their tail or pull their ears, they don’t react,” McLean said. “Dogs have empathy. They’re tuned in to those heightened emotions.”

“The first mandate would be to have the dog available for forensic interviews,” McLean said.

But the dog’s role would go beyond that.

“The courthouse is a scare place,” McLean said. “For kids, it’s a lot.

Facility dogs are sometimes allowed in a courtroom.

The dog might have to “lay for two hours in a witness box when a child is testifying in court,” she said.

The dog must be able to remain unnoticed and would be brought into and taken out of court while the jury was not present.

If the jury noticed the dog, the defense might argue that its presence generated additional sympathy for a victim.

Whenever the dog is with a child, or someone else who needs it, the role is the same. “It’s a sense of comfort, a sense of peace,” McLean said.

There won’t be a dog arriving at the center in the next few weeks.

“Once we’re matched with a dog, we’re probably still looking at a year,” McLean said.

But, the dollars will speed the process.

Being able to tell Courthouse Dogs Foundation and other entities that the community – not a public official – raised the money “signifies to them that the project has community support,” McLean said.

Children are not the only ones who might benefit from the presence of a CAC facility dog.

“Secondary trauma is one of those areas that is important and I think the dog will also help with that,” McLean said.

Secondary trauma affects people who have to see the impacts of and hear details of “some horrible, horrible things,” she said.

“One in 10 children will be sexually assaulted before their 18th birthday,” she said. “A very small percentage of children actually disclose while they are a kid or even as an adult.”

The Hooktown donation will either fully fund the training and purchase of the dog or be very close, McLean said.

Pearson indicated that Hooktown may continue to accept donations that are specific to the facility dog. Phase 2 of that project includes providing required food, veterinary care, grooming, and equipment.

As it raised money for the dog, Hooktown continued its primary mission and contributed over $11,000 to “the entities that we always support,” Pearson said. Next up for the organization is the fall charity garage sale. Hooktown is accepting items for the sale to be held, with a chicken barbecue, on Sept. 10 and 11.