PAWS in Parkland: How our Naples Community is Helping Parkland Heal

Ivy Schamis’ History of the Holocaust class is so popular with the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that there is a waiting list to enroll. Schamis was teaching this class to seniors when Nikolas Cruz fired a barrage of shots into her classroom, killing two of her students and injuring several others. In an instant, Schamis’s curriculum changed from teaching about survivors to teaching children how to survive.

“We were about to start learning about the Berlin Olympics when all of this happened.” That’s how she refers to what has been named by the media as the Valentine’s Massacre: “All of this.”  While she hovered among her frightened students, reassuring the survivors while holding the hands of the dying, she thought to herself, “what am I going to say if he comes back to my room? I am going to tell him, ‘Nik, we love you’.”

He didn’t return to her room and the SWAT team eventually evacuated the shocked teacher and students to safety. It was then that the tremendous work of healing began.

Meanwhile, in Naples, PAWS Assistance Dogs Lead Trainer Sally O’Neill was busy running training sessions of support dogs destined for veterans and others in need when she learned that there was a need in Parkland to comfort the students and staff of Stoneman Douglas. Executive Director Jeannie Bates and O’Neill did not hesitate to bring a whole team of PAWS dogs and handlers to Parkland to begin to do what they do best: heal wounded warriors.

In Parkland, PAWS volunteer handler Michael McCabe said that when the students approached the dogs, their sad and serious faces immediately broke out in smiles and laughs. One parent told Michael that this was the first time his daughter had spoken a word in the week since the shooting.

 Alyssa Fletcher, a student who particularly connected with PAWS dog Luigi, asked if the team could bring him to a memorial 5K in honor of fallen track coach and teacher Scott Biegel. It was there that Fletcher introduced Luigi to Ivy Schamis. “The connection between the teacher and dog was almost spiritual,” Sally O’Neill said of that meeting in Pine Trails Park.  Sensing the healing effect the dogs had on the children, and experiencing her own connection with Luigi, Schamis asked if Luigi could stay to help the students return to class. She could use a support dog, too, she admitted.

Jeannie Bates decided at once that PAWS would permanently place Luigi with Ivy Schamis.

While one of the main jobs of a PAWS assistance dog is to help the disabled with retrieving and carrying items, opening and closing doors, turning on and off lights, and even taking clothes out of a dryer, they are also able to interrupt anxiety and panic-related episodes. The PAWS Assistance Crisis Team (PACT) is always ready to respond to a situation to assist adults and children in crisis after a tragic event.

The crew of dogs and volunteer handlers have been taking turns spending time with the students and staff, returning to Naples intermittently to give the dogs respite and training, often spending their own money for transportation and lodging near the high school. Bates says that the dogs will continue to visit Parkland as long as they are needed.

 Meanwhile, Luigi (“Weejers” to the PAWS volunteers) has been finishing his two year training in preparation for his assignment to Schamis, who also travels to Naples with her husband Jef-frey to learn the commands and handling of a service dog at home and in public places. He will be ready to go home with the couple sometime this summer, when he turns two years old.

Now that the students have returned to school, Schamis says the presence of the dogs in the building give the children incentive to be in the classroom, and comfort when they are having a bad day. She rewards her students with “cuddle time” with the dogs if they have participated in class and have stayed focused.

She has picked up the curriculum in the classroom right where she left off, “when all of this happened,” teaching her students how to identify hate crimes around the world, at their future colleges and workplaces, on the internet, and here at home. She encourages her students to remember the heroes of the Holocaust, who had to live out their lives with courage in the face of death, or the lifelong trauma of having survived the experience. “I tell the children, these people had to find a way to survive, and they weren’t lucky like us to have such a supportive community like Parkland, and these service dogs.”

As part of Schamis’ personal healing journey (and Luigi’s public training) she visited the Southwest Florida Holocaust museum in Naples, with Luigi and the PAWS staff at her side. She says that it makes her proud to see small communities teaching this history through their own museums and exhibits. For Schamis, it is important to teach about the Holocaust and hate as both an educator, and now, as a witness.

Schamis whispers to me that every day she watches the video of the shooting on her phone that a student recorded in her classroom. She hands me her phone and asks me to watch it with her. After the seconds-long video is over, with the loud popping sound of the gun and the screams of the students hanging heavy in the air, I notice that Ivy is crying. Luigi’s gaze is focused on her as he sits by her feet.

Why does she watch this every day, I ask; is this a part of the healing?

“It’s important for me to watch it every day,” she says, “so that ‘all of this’ is never forgotten.”

How You Can Help PAWS Help our Parkland Neighbors

From the time a PAWS dog is born, it takes two years to raise, train, and ultimately match the dog with its eventual owner. The puppies are placed in volunteer foster homes and train at the PAWS facility in Naples when they are about eight weeks old. The lifetime cost of each dog from birth through adulthood is around $40,000. PAWS provides care for the dog throughout its lifespan and will assist the recipient with other costs as needed.

Volunteers must be over the age of 18. A wheelchair-bound volunteer like Joe Sullivan (photo) is particularly wonderful because, according to Lead Trainer Sally O’Neill, the dogs respond better to a real wheelchair-bound person rather than a volunteer sitting in a wheelchair, as the dogs sense that the able-bodied volunteers do not need their assistance. In this photo, PAWS dog Rocky is demonstrating how he would help Joe navigate his wheelchair up a steep incline.

In addition to assisting our Parkland neighbors and wounded veterans, PAWS partners with The Shelter for Abused Women and Children, David Lawrence Center Children’s Crisis Care Unit, Collier County Libraries and Schools Literacy programs, Hazelden Addiction Center, Lorenzo Walker Institute, and the Marine Corps League.

.All of the work of PAWS is funded by private donors, corporate sponsors, family foundations, and fundraising events. Donations of any size are welcome. The typical census at any given time at PAWS is 18-25 service dogs. For more information, visit pawsassistancedogs. org or PAWS’ Facebook page; or call 239-775-1660.

Photos by Lisette Morales