The incredible work of John Hunt and Gunther (Bang’s Aleutian Sky CD RN RA RE – Trapper x Emmy “A” Litter, bred by Karen & Richard Bang) continues to provide comfort and support to our nation’s latest mass shooting crisis . On February 18th, only days after the horrific school shooting in Parkland, FL this very special support team received their request to deploy to Florida to provide comfort for the victims and their families. For the past 3 years Gunther & John – a former NJ State Police Officer & now Corporate Director of Security for AtlantiCare – have volunteered hundreds of hours as not only a Therapy Team, but a certified crisis response team specializing in active shootings as part of the Tri-State K-9 Crisis Response Team based near Atlantic City, NJ.
Sadly, this is the 4th major deployment John & Gunther have had to participate in – comforting families following the June 12, 2016, Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida; the Oct. 1 Route 91 Harvest music festival shooting in Las Vegas and, most recently, the Nov. 5 shooting at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
John and Gunther are a highly requested team who participate in memorials, vigils, meetings, presentations in addition to helping comfort the victims enough so that they can share their testimony and stories with the proper investigation teams. John would say that Gunther does all the “work”, he instinctively knows who in the room needs him the most and is drawn to them.
We know John is an integral part of how and why Gunther is so good at what he does as not every therapy team could do what they do at such a mass scale.
John and his family also have a 2nd Bang Rottweiler pup, Luther (Trapper x Emmy “C” Litter) who has recently gained his certification for Therapy work and will soon be joining his big brother on visits. When they aren’t traveling around the country on special assignment, John, Gunther, and now Luther are regular visitors to AtlantiCare facilities comforting families and patients including Atlantic City Police Officer Josh Vadell who was shot in the line of duty in Sept. 2016 – the Vadell family, thanks to his love of Gunther now have their very own Rottweiler to love on throughout the year!
John, Gunther, & Luther also spend time at schools, hospitals, and universities providing instruction and training on crisis/ active shooting response. Words simply cannot describe their contribution to the community or work as Rottweiler breed ambassadors. They are the only Rottweilers on the Tri-State team.
Here is a recent article about their FL deployment: http://bit.ly/GuntherFL
