Hazel Comforts Those Dealing With Loss At Titus Funeral Home
Hazel Comforts Those Dealing With Loss At Titus Funeral Home
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Hazel Comforts Those Dealing With Loss At Titus Funeral HomeCoping with the passing of a loved one can be one of life’s greatest challenges.
Titus Funeral Home in Warsaw has employed the services of a 5-year-old, 70-pound Sheepadoodle therapy dog named Hazel to help comfort those dealing with grief. A Sheepadoodle is a cross between an old English sheepdog and a poodle.
“There are funeral homes around the country who have employed therapy dogs and have been very successful with it, but (Hazel) is definitely the first in our area that we are aware of,” Titus owner and funeral director Cory Benz said.
He acknowledged that DeMoney Grimes Funeral Home in Columbia City also has a therapy dog, but said Titus is “one of the few funeral homes in northern Indiana to employ the services of a therapy dog with those who are grieving.”
Hazel came to Titus through her handler and owner, Stacy Huffer.
“I’m a classroom teacher, too, at Leesburg. That’s my full-time job. And we’ve just been talking a lot these last couple of years about social emotional learning and how a therapy dog may be an asset to a school building. And then we started talking here (at Titus) about a therapy dog being an asset at a funeral home as well,” Huffer said. She works part time at Titus.
“So we partnered,” Benz said.
Huffer got Hazel trained by Deborah Bryant, Fun Dog Training, of Wabash. “She learned hand signals for her commands so that it’s silent and I’m not yelling at her to sit and do those kind of things. Debbie is also a tester for Alliance of Therapy Dogs, and that’s how we got connected there, too,” Huffer said.
Hazel’s certification is through the Alliance of Therapy Dogs. She was trained this past fall and certified in February.
“It’s positive. To be a service dog, you kind of have to be more with the punishment and tight on your commands. With the therapy, it’s more of their personality and temperament,” Huffer said.
Benz said that while a service dog serves one individual, a therapy dog provides comfort and companionship for multiple people.
“(Hazel) has a wonderful disposition. She’s always had the skill, it’s just that she’s finally now completed her training, officially,” he said.
Huffer said Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Chief Mike Wilson came to her dad’s visitation and Hazel was there to help Huffer’s daughter with the loss. Wilson met Hazel and told Huffer that Hazel was “ready to go.”
Benz said Hazel does not work every day at the funeral home, but she does work for visitations and by request to comfort people and provide “a mental escape, a mental distraction, an emotional crutch. Obviously, people connect with animals in a way that we don’t connect with each other sometimes, and animals feel – we know that. So her job here is to just provide comfort to people and help start that healing process, even if it’s in small bits.”
Hazel gets paid in treats.
As of Friday, Hazel has worked several times at the funeral home, Huffer said.
“She’s worked several funerals, and has been very well received,” Benz said.
“The first was, I asked the family if it would be OK, just to get (Hazel) some experience because they seemed like good people who would really appreciate her. And in asking, it brought up a discussion about dad’s love for animals. Come to find out, he was a collector of strays and kind of benevolent in the way that he cared for animals in his neighborhood, and cats and dogs were a huge part of his life that we hadn’t even touched on in getting to know this family,” he said.
Huffer said it really opened the family up to talk about their dad.
Benz said, “It had been hugely beneficial and uplifting to them to meet her, and it’s just neat to see how people respond to her, even in their grief. It gives them that brief window of escape.”
One service had several little kids that Hazel was able to help, Huffer said. “A couple of the kids wouldn’t leave her that night.”
Benz said the children love her, but the adults receive Hazel just as well.
“The kids absolutely love her. She’s their size,” he said.
“She does, in a way, mirror the personality of whoever is around. So the kids, obviously, can get her really hyped up and excited so she wants to play,” Benz said. “But the adults, and people who are grieving and having a tougher time, she does somehow catch those cues.”
Huffer said, “When I say we’re going to work, she knows what that means. The more she’s here, the more she’s understanding.”
The bow in Hazel’s hair makes her “more personable looking,” Huffer said. “I think for little kids that makes her more approachable, too.”
Hazel’s appearance is up to the family, but she’s getting more requested as people learn about her, Benz said. In the next couple of weeks, he said Titus may have an open house “meet-and-greet” for Hazel.
“It’s been received much bigger than I thought,” Huffer said. “I know people love dogs, but the number of shares and likes and people calling and coming in and noticing her on Facebook.”
“There’s been a phenomenally supportive response to having her here,” Benz said, adding that Hazel has sort of become a mascot for the funeral home.
