Nearly 3 years on, therapy dogs provide comfort to survivors of Nashville school shooting: “They can take your tears”

Nashville — At a glitzy award show last week in Nashville, Tennessee, a hero was honored: Sgt. Bo, a dog belonging to Faye Okert, a retired Nashville police officer.

Bo is not one of those highly trained police dogs, but a therapy dog, and yet he was the American Humane Society’s 2025 Hero Dog Award winner.

“I never ever would have dreamed that that scruffy mutt would have such an impact,” Okert told CBS News. 

So what did Bo do? Well, it wasn’t a rescue, at least not in the literal sense.

In March 2023, a gunman opened fire at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, killing three children and three adults.

One of those on scene to comfort the children in their grief following the shooting was Bo.

“He took the attention away from what was going on, and he was amazing,” Okert said.

Bo and some other dogs from a nonprofit group called Comfort Connections visited the Covenant School the week of the shooting, and continue to visit to this day, because, by all accounts, the results have been remarkable.

A group of children who survived the mass shooting spoke to CBS News. All of them said they had feared returning to school in the wake of it.

“I just didn’t feel safe,” one child said. “And then when I had the dogs, it just felt more better for me.”

“I could just see them or pet them or something, and it would just like calm me down immediately,” another added.

The children say the dogs just have this way, no matter what their breed and no matter how deep the pain, of providing comfort.

“They were a comforting presence at a time that I needed it badly,” said Eleanor Dieckhaus, who lost her 9-year-old sister Evelyn Dieckhaus in the shooting.

Afterward, Eleanor said she struggled to cry in front of people and let her emotions out. But not with the dogs.

“They can take your tears,” Eleanor said. “And sometimes, like the greatest form of hope can come from a dog that just sits there and lets you pet them.”