In Plymouth, there’s a new dog in town, a black Lab named Rio and he serves as the first comfort dog for the town’s Fire Department—a department that includes seven fire stations manned by 139 firefighters. Rio’s primary role is firefighter wellness, but the wellness of others as well. This, at the direction of Christian Horvath, Plymouth’s Emergency Management Director.
WATD’s Bobbi Clark has more….
Christian Horvath says he works out of the Emergency Management office, at the Cedarville Fire Station, and Rio accompanies him on his day to day activities…
“…whether it’s meetings at Town Hall, meetings at Station One, which is fire headquarters and then we set up meetings at—well, today, for instance, we went to Plymouth Crossings, which is an assisted living facility here in town, and we hung out with the seniors at the assisted living for almost 2 hours. We do that, we go to different schools. We go to the Center for Active Living and we’ve been doing that for –this is his 4th week. So we’ve been keeping him busy.”
Rio is part of the Plymouth County Comfort Dog program…
“We will do events around the County to assist as well because The D.A.’s office was nice enough to give us a mini-grant for the Town to help cover costs of Rio, so we will assist D.A. Cruz in that process.”
Comfort dogs are known to improve the health and well being of first responders.
In Plymouth, Bobbi Clark, WATD News.
