Melbourne Fire Department Welcomes Its First Therapy Dog
Published on December 18, 2025
During the December 12 Service and Achievement Ceremony, the Melbourne Fire Department’s first therapy dog, Rigs, was officially welcomed to the team and was celebrated along with firefighters who received promotions and awards.
Rigs is the newest member of the Melbourne Fire Department’s Peer Support Team — a group of trained firefighters who provide peer-to-peer counseling and support to help their colleagues cope with the many difficult and tragic incidents they respond to on a regular basis.
Over the past few years, Melbourne Fire’s Peer Support Team has been working hard to grow and expand the ways they can help their fellow firefighters. The addition of a therapy dog is part of the effort to ease stress and to increase comfort around the peer-support process — especially for those who find it difficult to admit when they are having trouble and are in need of help.
“A dog helps lighten the mood and also helps break the ice after a bad call,” said Lieutenant Kayla Burri, one of the leaders of Melbourne Fire’s Peer Support Team who was instrumental in bringing Rigs to the department.
Therapy dogs also have a unique ability to sense elevated levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, which may indicate that someone is silently struggling. “Rigs will walk around to everyone in the group and naturally spend more time with some people,” Lieutenant Burri said. Doing so allows everyone to have the opportunity to pet him or reach out. This reduces people’s stress hormone and increases their feel-good hormone, oxytocin. This can help the Peer Support Team recognize behaviors and stress levels, beyond what someone might say out loud. “He makes our job easier while also helping us do our jobs better,” she said.
Lieutenant Burri researched the benefits that therapy dogs have brought to the fire service and sought to find the right dog to best complement the Melbourne team. She found Rigs through a Tampa rescue organization, TheDoodPack, last spring. Since then, they put in hundreds of hours of training over the last six months and completed several trainings to fit the role as a fire K9. Rigs is now a nationally recognized therapy dog with Alliance of Therapy and a member of Melbourne Fire Department’s Peer Support team.
Rigs will continue his training, which includes going to and from work with his handler, Lieutenant Burri, attending peer support deployments, and soaking up all the love from his brothers and sisters. Being a station dog will also allow him to make an impact every day — increasing morale, creating a calm atmosphere and lowering stress levels in day-to-day situations.
Future plans include becoming Animal Crisis Response Certified, which will include a six-week class that will not only allow the pair to be deployed for statewide incidents, but will refine their training and assistance in processing traumatic events for their family right here in Melbourne.