Sycamore police therapy dog Dooley helped schools more than 500 times since 2022

SYCAMORE – It’s not every day a public school board meeting includes an update on the work of a dog, but that’s just what Dooley, a German Shorthaired Pointer who works as a therapy dog in the district, and his Sycamore Police Department partners did this week.

School resource officers Kaitlyn Pederson and Daniel Ludwig, of Sycamore School District 427, gave a year-in-review to the Sycamore school board Tuesday.

“Dan and I take a lot of pride in our role, and we really enjoy working with our staff and students, and our administration,” Pederson said.

Over the 2024-25 school year, School Resource Officers, sometimes called SROs, filed 73 reports at Sycamore High School, the officers said. Another 62 reports were filed at Sycamore Middle School and 50 were filed across the district’s elementary schools, they said.

Pederson said their reports can range, anything from a battery to informational reports.

The school resource officers also said they conducted 19 threat assessments during the year.

The officers told the school board they ascribe to three pillars as school resource officers: Safety, counseling and education. To that end, Ludwig said he often tells students to “make wise choices.”

“I just take the opportunity to try and build those relationships, get some educational points and send them on their way,” Ludwig said.

At Sycamore Middle School Pederson, with the help of trained therapy dog Dooley, focuses on mental health resources, drug education and relationship building.

Dooley was brought on as a therapy dog for the SRO program in October 2022. Over the past three school years, he’s been deployed more than 570 times to help students and staff across the school district.

“Some deployments are anything from five minutes, a child needing to get back to class, other things may be a couple of hours,” Pederson said.

Ludwig also thanked the board for allowing 120 officers from across DeKalb County to train at Sycamore High School this week.

At the end of the presentation, school board members were given a chance to pet Dooley, something many students also get an opportunity to do.

Board President Michael DeVito thanked Pederson and Ludwig for their service to the district, and said the current school board gives them their full support.

“What our SRO’s are doing on a day-to-day basis is truly a matter of life and death in a lot of cases,” DeVito said. “I can’t underscore enough how much it is important that we as a board continue to support our SROs.”