Content Warning:

This piece contains distressing themes including child abuse, domestic violence, murder, and suicide.

For the first 45 years of Tommy Yackley’s hard life, he never had a dog.

Sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, Yackley hugged his mom and younger sister goodbye at 22 years old. Then, with a full head of hair and freshly-shaven face, he entered his life behind bars.

Twenty-three years later, the California sun reflected off the top of Yackley’s bare head in the men’s prison yard as he gazed down at the puppy resting in the crook of his tattoo-adorned arm.

For the first time in decades, Yackley felt something other than the loneliness, self-loathing, and guilt that had swallowed him whole since the night he fatally stabbed two men on the front lawn of a friend’s house.

As the puppy snuggled against Yackley’s blue prison uniform, it reminded him of his childhood before his dad died when he was 12.

He didn’t know it then, but this puppy was the start of his new life.

In many ways, comfort dogs are a well-known phenomenon. We see them visiting children in hospitals, the elderly in retirement homes, and greeting anxious travelers at the airport. But a new generation of canines is finding work in trauma relief — soothing firefighters, former gang members, military vets, healthcare workers and incarcerated individuals.

“We know dogs are extremely beneficial in certain situations with children or adults and [the] community,” Andrea Hering, co-founder of Crisis Response Canines, said. "When all else fails, a dog can get through to somebody.”

A life before dogs

Yackley was a happy child until around ten years old. He was happiest woodworking and fixing old bicycles in the garage after school with his dad. Then Yackley noticed his dad needing to take more breaks during their projects — before their time in the garage stopped altogether.

For the next two years, Yackley traded in his weekend routine of a drive-in movie and a treat from the ice cream shop for nights spent at the hospital alongside his dad. He knew his dad was sick but didn’t think he was dying.

Shortly after Yackley’s 12th birthday, his mother picked him up from school and broke the news his dad was dead. He couldn’t imagine the dad he spent hours fixing bicycles with being gone, so he jumped on his bike, sped to the hill at the top of his street and furiously pedaled in circles until the sky grew dark and it was time to go home.

The death of Yackley’s dad wasn’t the only shock he went through that day. When he got home, his mother’s boyfriend, Bob, sat at the kitchen table. He had just moved in. No one had told the boy.

Yackley said Bob had a temper often leading to violence and abuse when his mother wasn’t around. But he didn’t want to worry his mother or sisters, so he kept quiet.

Until the day 12-year-old Yackley heard a noise in the garage after school. He stood on his tiptoes to reach the window of what used to be his favorite place to woodwork with his father. He saw Bob with needles and what the boy guessed to be drugs based on what he had seen on TV. He later learned it was heroin.

Yackley tried to tell his mother about Bob’s drug use. She didn’t believe him, and the abuse only worsened. Yackley said Bob would trip him when he tried to walk down the hallway and smack him in the head when he passed the living room. Sometimes he landed against the wall. “I tried to tell my mom,” Yackley said. “It just fell on deaf ears.”

When a scream startled 13-year-old Yackley awake one night, he rushed out of his bedroom to see Bob throw Yackley's mother to the ground. Yackley said he tried to intervene but Bob beat him. The following day, Yackley went to school. He didn’t come back.

The boy spent the next two years crashing on friend's couches or in abandoned houses. If he couldn’t find a place to stay for the night, he would ride his bicycle around town until it was time for school the next morning.

Yackley said he started to get bullied at school. Sometimes it was about his appearance. Other times it was because he didn’t have a dad anymore. "I started to keep everything inside," Yackley said. "I figured if I’m quiet and I don’t say anything, nobody can hurt me."

Yackley continued to attend school until he was 17 and dropped out of high school.

Five years later, Yackley stabbed three people during a drunken brawl on the front lawn of a house party. Two of them died.

Behind Bars

When Yackley entered the California State Prison system at 22, the only thing on his mind was survival.

“You’re growing up and learning how to survive in there,” Yackley said. “As long as I can make it to tomorrow, that’s my focus. One day at a time.”

But more than two decades later, Yackley was transferred to Lancaster, a different branch of the California state prison system. It’s where he held a puppy for the first time.

Yackley saw the dog training program in the prison yard but didn’t think he was “good enough” to participate, he said. Until the day Job Grobman, founder of Paws For Life, handed him a puppy.

“I was speechless,” Yackley said. And he committed to joining Paws For Life.

Paws For Life is one of seven prison programs in California that pairs incarcerated individuals with a dog from one of the many overcrowded animal shelters in Los Angeles. Over ten weeks, the canine is taught basic commands and becomes socialized with other dogs and people.

Yackley was not the only hardened criminal to discover self-transformation behind bars.

Sexually abused at seven-years-old, Matthew (Matt) Bleecker didn't begin to process his childhood trauma until he was 40 years old, serving 32 years to life in prison for three nonviolent theft crimes.

Like Yackley, he spent his first seven years in prison trying to survive. Bleecker described prison gangs, racial violence, corrupt guards and drug rings. Then he discovered dogs.

“I came [to Lancaster] still rough around the edges,” Bleecker said. “And what really made a change for me was [when] I saw dogs.”

Bleecker said the first thing he did after arriving at Lancaster was approach the men working with the dogs in the prison yard. They encouraged Bleecker to join Paws For Life and invited him to be a part of their other rehabilitative prison endeavors.

So he started attending weekly self-help classes held in the prison, where he learned about trauma for the first time.

“You [have] to have a program that you can be yourself, let your guard down [and] become vulnerable and tap into some of those feelings that you’re masking,” Bleecker said. “And Lancaster, that was that place for me.”

Between the dogs, self-help classes and the sense of community within Paws For Life, Bleecker discovered a part of himself he didn’t know existed.

“I never thought that I deserved anything good in my life,” Bleecker said. “I realized I was still letting what happened to me when I was seven years old dictate my 40-year-old life.”

Part Two.

Extreme Comfort Dogs

But first, the dogs we know

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Meet Pitzel the Therapy Dog

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Twenty years ago, Robby Cordobes had a comfort dog. Only it was trained in search and rescue.

When both towers of the World Trade Center in New York City collapsed during the deadly terrorist attack known as 9/11, firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and search-and-rescue teams reported to the scene.

Cordobes, Captain of Fire Station 95, a hazmat task force in Los Angeles, led a team of 76 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) members deployed to New York City immediately following 9/11. Four of their team members were dogs.

For nine days, the FEMA team searched for survivors trapped beneath the rubble of what used to be the Twin Towers. But there weren’t any.

Cordobes said it was difficult for the dogs to maintain their high energy and spirit after continuing to find only dead bodies. After several long days of only recovering body fragments, Cordobes and the team conducted mock search-and-rescue drills. The team would hide, pretending to need rescuing, and the dogs would find them. “Saving” the human FEMA team members boosted the canines’ motivation to continue searching for survivors.

While the mock search-and-rescue drills lifted the dogs’ morale, the rest of the crew was exhausted and quickly losing hope. They leaned on one another for support, including the search-and-rescue dogs.

Despite search-and-rescue as their deployment purpose, the canines naturally provided comfort and emotional support for their FEMA handlers.

“Dogs are extremely comforting on incidents. Whether they’re search dogs or therapy dogs or service dogs, people always gravitate towards them,” Cordobes said. “And in crisis situations, all you want to do is be around them. They bring you a sense of serenity [and] civility.”

Nearly two decades later, the comfort and support the search-and-rescue dogs provided Cordobes and the FEMA team during 9/11 has an official name.

Crisis Response:

The next generation of animal-assisted therapy

After nine years as a therapy dog pattern observer, Andrea Hering noticed a shift in animal-assisted therapy.

“As the world [was] changing and more traumatic events were happening, they were asking us to put our therapy dogs in more unpredictable and complex environments,” Hering said. “And while the dogs were okay, we realized that the handlers needed additional training in order to be able to handle individuals experiencing intense emotions after traumatic events.”

Hering co-founded Crisis Response Canines in 2018, resulting in 64 teams of specially trained crisis response dogs and their handlers equipped to respond to crisis situations around the nation. They help reduce distressing psychological symptoms that often occur after a traumatic event.

Crisis response dogs can help first responders who frequently face traumatic events.

After 34 years of serving as a firefighter, Battalion Chief Robert Takeshita came to a stark conclusion.

Takeshita processed worker compensation requests as part of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Risk Management Team. He realized firefighters were not only battling fires and responding to crisis events. They were also grappling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression.

“It’s almost like a battle you’re in,” Takeshita said. “You’re going into harm’s way.”

“You’re asked to go into a burning building, you’re asked to make a rescue and you’re asked to go up on that roof. Most people will say, ‘No we’re running the other way,’ while we’re running inside. That’s how we’re trained.”

Takeshita aims to reduce the rates of depression, PTSD and suicide in firefighters, which are than the depression and PTSD rates of the general population, and

The rate of depression and PTSD in firefighters is five times higher than the general population. The suicide rate of firefighters is twice the civilian rate.

So Takeshita adopted Willow, a five-year-old English labrador.

Takeshita and Willow trained for eight months to become a certified team of an animal-assisted crisis response dog and handler, emphasizing the canine-handler bond.

“You know, she’s sitting at my feet right now,” Takeshita said over a phone interview. “She has a little couch I bought her, but she prefers to be right next to me.”

Takeshita and Willow's close-knit bond extends to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Together, they host a peer support group, allowing firefighters to debrief after responding to a crisis event.

In a study on the effects of service dogs and military veterans, the presence of a dog helped former military vets connect with other people in social situations. Takeshita has found that to be true between Willow and his firefighters.

“When you introduce the canines, the happy hormones [such as] serotonin and dopamine [increase] and it allows people to then communicate what’s troubling them,” Takeshita said.

In Willow’s comforting presence, firefighters have confided in Takeshita about their ongoing struggles with PTSD. Takeshita shared a few examples during an interview while maintaining their confidentiality.

For one firefighter, Home Depot feels like any other store. That is until he passes the aisle lined with zip ties. While responding to a dispatch, the firefighter witnessed a cartel execution. Now, every time he sees a zip tie, he also sees the face of the person executed by the cartel.

For another firefighter, the distinct smell of vinegar transports them back to the scene of a death. “He cannot get that image out of his head every time he smells vinegar,” Takeshita said.

A certified trauma-informed therapist, Lauryn Lucido, explained, “When trauma happens, your brain is coding the event as traumatic.” Anything the brain registers as a similar sight, smell, sound, taste or feeling can trigger a trauma response. This response happens because the mind is trying to alert the body to danger, whether or not that danger is present, she said. “Our brain makes these connections because that’s how we survive.”