{"id":16885,"date":"2019-09-20T09:30:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T13:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benefitscanada.com\/news\/mississaugas-new-canine-employee-helps-firefighters-talk-mental-health-135989"},"modified":"2019-09-20T09:30:20","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T13:30:20","slug":"mississaugas-new-canine-employee-helps-firefighters-talk-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2019\/09\/20\/mississaugas-new-canine-employee-helps-firefighters-talk-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississauga\u2019s new canine employee helps firefighters talk mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Credit: <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Kelsey Rolfe<\/span> | September 20, 2019 <\/p>\n

The City of Mississauga\u2019s newest employee, Ajax the two-year-old golden labrador retriever, is dogged in his pursuit of better mental health for emergency services personnel.<\/p>\n

Ajax, a facility dog from National Service Dogs, is available to Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services staff as part of the department\u2019s wellness-fitness initiative. The goal of having Ajax on-site is to help employees open up about their mental health.<\/p>\n

Read: A look at Mars\u2019 pet-friendly workplace policies<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of our whole mental-health program and our [post-traumatic stress disorder] prevention plan . . . it\u2019s all about the preventative work, removing the stigma of mental health [and] having the ability for people to talk more openly about occupational stress injuries, about those bad calls,\u201d says Tim Beckett, Mississauga\u2019s fire chief and director of emergency management. \u201cFirefighters are going to attend those bad calls, but it\u2019s about how we proactively deal with the people afterward to build resiliency and take away some of that stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ajax has been trained to sense and approach people who are under stress and act as a companion to them.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the City of Mississauga held a health fair with the National Service Dogs taking part to showcase its program. That gave the department the idea, says Beckett, and staff began looking into how to bring a dog on board.<\/p>\n

The department needed to get support from city council and administration and then address human resources issues \u2014 such as identifying if any employees had dog allergies, were afraid of dogs or didn\u2019t want one around \u2014 and legal concerns around liability.<\/p>\n

Read: Cadillac Fairview eases effects of Blue Monday with indoor puppy parks for Toronto workers<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

While Ajax is still owned by the National Service Dogs, he lives with his handler Ryan Coburn, one of the co-chairs of the wellness-fitness initiative and a section chief in the fire department\u2019s training division. The wellness-fitness initiative has a set of secondary handlers who can bring Ajax to fire stations in the city while his primary handler is at work and talk with employees about their mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Ajax] works a 40-hour workweek just like Ryan and doesn\u2019t stay here at night. He doesn\u2019t come in on weekends unless it\u2019s something very special,\u201d says Beckett says. \u201cHe won\u2019t go out at night unless it\u2019s something very significant that we would need to interact with the crews right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Ajax works primarily with the MFES, Beckett says the department would bring him to other city divisions if there was a need. \u201cIt\u2019s surprising how much of a difference a dog in the room makes, in terms of making people feel better, more relaxed and allowing a more open dialogue to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read: Corus seeks mental-health boosts through four-legged festivities<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kelsey Rolfe | September 20, 2019 The City of Mississauga\u2019s newest employee, Ajax the two-year-old golden labrador retriever, is dogged in his pursuit of better mental health for emergency services personnel. Ajax, a facility dog from...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16885"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}