A therapy dog who helps Cole County children dealing with abuse or neglect in their homes is featured on a nationwide commercial.
Olive is a poodle that has worked in Judge Jon Beetem's courtroom during the children's docket since August 2016.
Olive's original trainer, Brandon McMillan, hosts the TV show "Lucky Dog." He was honored at this week's Westminster Dog Show. The management at Cosequin, a vet-approved medical joint health supplement for cats and dogs, approached McMillan to do a special video about the work he has done with his therapy dogs and how Cosequin helps them. He largely featured Olive in the video, as she has been a big part of both sides of that coin. The commercial has been released on social media following its premiere on the show.
McMillan lives in Los Angeles. His mission is rescuing untrained dogs at neighborhood animal shelters. He takes them to his training facility, Lucky Dog Ranch, and works to make the dogs ready for new homes.
Bringing in Olive was the idea of Lisa Bax, office manager for the law firm of Bartimus, Frickleton Robertson Rader, who had seen McMillan's TV program.
Bax is also an advocate with Capital City Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program, which connects children in the legal system who have been abused, neglected or found in unstable homes with adult advocates to represent them.
After talking with McMillan, he agreed to get Olive to Bax and later went to Bax's home in Taos to film a TV segment.
"In the commercial video, we talked that to date she has worked with 100 kids through Judge Beetem's docket on abused and neglected cases and CASA," Bax said. "I know of no other circuit court using a dog in Missouri. I have had people from outside the state who saw her on the TV show contacting me wanting to know more. They don't have a CASA and want to know how they could do the same thing."
McMillan said many times therapy dogs will be Labradors or golden retrievers, but he thought Olive would be a good fit for this job because she's small and children can hold her.
Bax said they can get a call at anytime during the day that she and Olive may be needed.
"If they know a child has high anxiety, we've been called to come sit with them, and Olive calms them down," she said.