Hanover welcomes its first comfort dog for veterans

HANOVER, Mass. — A South Shore town just started up a one-of-a-kind program aimed at supporting veterans.

They’ve enlisted the help of a four-legged friend that is already making an impact in the community.

At the Council on Aging office in Hanover, a group of veterans enjoys meeting over coffee and donuts—but now they have a new addition to welcome to their weekly informational sessions. Sarge—a first-of-his-kind comfort dog for veterans—is now helping out any service member who walks through the doors.

“He’s a welcome sight, so everybody enjoys seeing him,” said Fred Ciliberto, an Air Force Veteran. “A lot of people, even the elderly who come in for services here, just love the guy, so he’s a good boy.”

Terrence O’Keeffe is Sarge’s owner and Veteran Services Officer for the town of Hanover. In his position, he’s always wanted to do something more impactful for the community—and the idea of using his rescue dog just kind of fell into his lap.

“He’s always had a predilection to going toward people that weren’t happy,” said Terrence O’Keeffe, Hanover’s Veteran Services Officer.

So O’Keeffe decided to team up with Five Rings K9 services, which has trained countless comfort dogs for law enforcement.

“We saw in Sarge right away was that he was a very, very outgoing dog,” said Mike MacCurtain, the owner of Five Ring K9 Services. “So a little bit of training, we can turn that into something positive for us.”

Sarge trained weekly for about a year. And now that he’s received his advanced good citizen certificate, he’s serving as the town’s veterans services comfort dog. His role is to help veterans suffering from issues like PTSD and anxiety open up.

“Veterans don’t like to talk about their troubles, their woes,” said O’Keeffe. “They compartmentalize it. And it can lead to bubbling over and have other drastic effects that could not only just affect them, but the people that are around them.”

Already in just the short few weeks he’s been on duty, he’s made an impact on a veteran.

“Rubbing his legs, cold sweat,” said O’Keeffe. “You can see it. Over a period of time of him coming here he was absolutely comfortable coming and talking to me.”

O’Keeffe says Sarge has been a huge asset and lets veterans know his office isn’t about pushing papers—it’s about compassion and comfort.

“It definitely helps bring out the issues that people actually want to talk about, and they’re fighting themselves to not say anything about it,” said O’Keeffe. “He’s had a tremendous impact. He’s a lot more popular than I am; I’m just the guy at the other end of the leash at this point.”

O’Keeffe says Sarge is available to veterans and the entire community. He says Sarge’s training was all based on donations; no grants were involved.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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