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Crisis K-9s becoming more popular among Iowa law enforcement
More than three dozen dogs have been trained to work in Iowa first responder departments to provide support to victims, witnesses, officers and even suspects after a critical incident.
Feb. 15, 2026 5:30 am
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K-9 Karl is a very good boy.
That’s what Coralville Police Chief Kyle Nicholson — and probably anyone else who has met the 7-month-old Australian Labradoodle — has to say about him.
Karl has been training as a K-9 officer with his handler, Lt. Mike Mrstik of the Coralville Police Department, since he was about 4 months old, but his role with the department isn’t what most people expect when they hear “police dog.”
“Karl is very innocent, and that's where I want him to be,” Mrstik said. “I'm very selective as far as the environments I put him in. Karl would never go into a dangerous environment, per se, on scene. Usually, if I were to bring Karl on scene, the scene would be safe, or safe as can be.”
While other police K-9s are trained to sniff out drugs, detect bombs, or apprehend criminals, Karl’s training centers around reading a room, listening to his handler, and being present and focused in order to offer comfort to people experiencing emotional distress.
He is one of about 40 dogs in Iowa who have been, or are being, trained as crisis response K-9s — essentially, therapy dogs who can provide support to victims, witnesses, officers and even suspects after a critical incident.
The crisis dogs work in all kinds of emergency response departments across the state, including law enforcement agencies, fire departments, emergency medical services and emergency management agencies. They are usually trained by Crisis Canines of the Midlands, a Colfax-based nonprofit that was founded in 2022.
Before the nonprofit was founded, there was only one certified crisis dog in Iowa: K-9 Matt, with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Since then, the nonprofit has certified 40 dogs as crisis K-9s, 36 of which work in Iowa. The other four work in departments in Mississippi, Nebraska, Maine and Minnesota. Several more dogs, including Karl, are in the process of being trained.
“This program has grown tremendously, and people are starting to see the benefit of having these crisis canines in their stations while they're working,” said Emily Feagins, the public information officer for Crisis Canines of the Midlands. “These dogs, they just know how to sense feelings and emotions. They'll come sit on your lap, or they'll come and sit beside you and just put their head on you, and then you just pet them.”
Crisis dogs come from all backgrounds
The dogs can be any age and breed, and can come from any background, as long as they have the temperament to get along well with all kinds of people and animals and they are able to get through training that focuses on exposing them to situations that most dogs would not normally encounter, and might be frightened by. This includes things like having a helicopter land in their vicinity, getting used to lights and sirens from emergency vehicles, and learning to recognize and respond to their handler’s obedience commands from across a crowded room.
“During training, we try to introduce them to really anything and everything that we can think of that they could possibly encounter in real life,” Feagins said. “We go through drones, boat rescue stuff, divers, helicopters. We work with Life Flight a lot, and Mercy One to land the helicopters with the dogs, so the dogs understand that their handler is there to keep them safe, and they are never going to put them in an unsafe situation.”
A lot of the training also focuses on training a dog’s handler to work with them, and recognize when the dog is uncomfortable or not sure how to respond to a situation.
“When this first started, my training exposure was a lot of the psychology of how dogs think, how they react, body language,” Mrstik said. “We’ve had a class on body language. I would say that the training is just as much for each dog's handler as it is for the dog themselves. I've had dogs my entire life, and each week I go to class, and I learn something new.”
Some departments will buy a puppy, like the Coralville Police Department did with Karl, who they can train from a young age to be a crisis response dog. Karl — who is named after Sgt. John Karl Williams, a 28-year Coralville Police Officer who died in the line of duty in 2022 — cost about $10,000 to buy and train. The cost was sponsored and paid for in full by Iowa City Scheels, in Coralville.
Buying a puppy allowed the department to pick a dog that was specifically bred to be friendly and obedient, making it easy for him to excel in his training. Although he won’t be able to graduate from the program until fall — because he has to be a year old to graduate and he won’t turn 1 until June, after the spring training graduation date — he is already performing well-above his age level, according to the Coralville police chief.
“I should mention that Karl's a really good boy, and he is hitting milestones that even the trainers wouldn't expect him to hit. Tests that would be difficult for a pup his age to pass, he's passed with flying colors,” Nicholson said. “The breeder did an excellent job in temperament testing to find us the right dog that's going to do what we need to do, and we've been incredibly happy with Karl, and I think that he will be an excellent fit for us here at the department.”
Other departments have taken different approaches to finding a dog for the program, including picking a dog that an officer already owns to go through the training, or adopting a dog at an animal rescue shelter.
Johnson County Sheriffs’ Office one of first agencies to bring in crisis K-9
K-9 Rudy, with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, was a member of the first full graduating class from the Crisis Canines of the Midlands, in Spring 2024. He was a rescue, from Forever Home Dog Rescue in Des Moines, so he was cheaper than Karl, only costing the sheriff’s office a couple hundred dollars in rescue fees.
Alissa Schuerer, Rudy’s handler, first heard about the Crisis Canines program when she met Special Agent Kristen Kotrous — K-9 Matt’s handler with the Iowa DCI — at a law enforcement conference about officer wellness. Schuerer saw the impact that Matt had on officer well-being, and asked to bring the program to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.
Rudy — a 3-year-old mixed breed — has had a great impact on the investigations work at the sheriff’s office in the two years he’s been there, Schuerer said. A lot of his work is around the office, supporting officers after difficult calls, being present in interviews with victims or witnesses of crimes and, of course, begging for treats.
Schuerer tracks Rudy’s engagement with the community, and in 2025 she logged almost 100 hours that he spent connecting with more than 4,600 people. Some of those contacts included hundreds of people at once, like during school visits or community events, but many were one-on-one. Those encounters include things like children’s forensic interviews, sitting with a victim who was about to give a deposition for a trial, even being with a juvenile suspect during a suspect interview.
“Most people who I talk to are typically in that fight, freeze mindset, and so they're just barely processing things. I don't think they always recognize the impact he's doing,” Schuerer said.
“I've had a couple people verbalize it. A gal came in was really, really scared to come in and talk. She didn't know I had him, and I asked if it was OK. She said she's a huge dog person, and that it really just made it so much easier to have him there. It's really fulfilling when they say that it was helpful, because it's unfortunate that they're here to report in the first place.”
Rudy has also become a well-loved part of the Sheriff’s Office, and is often missed by officers when he’s not there. A large part of a crisis K-9’s role, aside from providing comfort to victims of a crisis, is to be available to comfort first responders after they return from a stressful call.
K-9 Karl, despite not yet being fully certified, has also started to work regularly with Coralville Police Officers — and other city employees whose offices are located nearby — something that Mrstik said he hopes can have a positive effect on the mental health of members of the department.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, about 30 percent of first responders have behavioral health conditions like depression or PTSD. In comparison, only about 20 percent of the general population has similar conditions. According to the National Institutes of Health, somewhere between 9 and 15 percent of police officers have PTSD, specifically, compared to about 8 percent of the regular population.
“There absolutely still is a stigma involving mental health and seeking help,” Mrstik said. “Society and police officers alike have to realize that a police officer, behind the badge, behind the vest, we're all human at the end of the day. We still share the same emotions, we still share the same senses, the feelings, all of that stuff is alike for you and I. We're very similar in that aspect, and I think people forget about that.”
And just like their officer counterparts, Rudy and Karl get to go home at the end of the day and take off their badges. Outside of training, they are just regular dogs, with their own distinct personalities and quirks. Rudy, for example, doesn’t like it when the people around him wear hats — something that Schuerer said she’s tried to address in training, but Rudy’s reactions to hats are inconsistent and don’t always come out when prompted.
“It’s hit or miss sometimes,” Schuerer said. “You can train, train, and train a dog, but they’re still a dog.”
Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com
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