Blue Haven for Ukraine: A conference on canine-assisted therapy and psycho-emotional support takes place in Truskavets
November 28, 2025
In Ukraine, service dogs are well known for their ability to detect explosives, search for drugs or follow the trail. Strong, reliable, and deeply loyal, they have been assisting law enforcers in their daily work for a long time. But the war has revealed another side of their capabilities. Today, canine specialists are increasingly focusing on another task: helping law-enforcement officers to rebuild their psychological and physical well-being. Exercises performed together with the trained dogs help officers to regain mobility, rediscover motivation for movements, overcome pain, and receive emotional relief.
Last week, in the frame of the ‘Blue Haven for Ukraine’ project, Truskavets hosted the All-Ukrainian scientific and practical conference ‘Current issues of engaging service dogs to providing psycho-emotional support to police officers and other people affected by Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine’. The event aimed to present the outcomes of a pilot project on introducing canine units into psycho-emotional support programs for police officers and their families. Both Ukrainian and international experts shared their experience, research findings, and practical approaches to using canine-assisted therapy to restore mental health and physical well-being.
“What unites all of us here is the firm understanding that mental health is not an add-on to operational readiness — it is its backbone. In a context of ongoing aggression, persistent risk, and sustained pressure on your defenders and emergency responders, investing in psychological resilience is an urgent responsibility and a shared commitment”, said Daina Toleikayte, EUAM Project Management Officer.
Over the course of three-day event, which combined theory and practice – K9 experts, dog handlers, cynologists and psychologists led presentations, training sessions and gave workshops, demonstrating practical methods of using service dogs in physical rehabilitation and emotional support.
The experts also discussed the prospects of broader implementation of canine-assisted therapy in Ukraine. Maksym Pishchanskyi, Head of the Kyiv Region Police Canine Center commented: “Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the staff of the Canine Center of the Kyiv Regional Police have taken on a social responsibility – providing emotional support to people who have experienced the horrors of war. Although our practice is still relatively new, the work of canine specialists and their four-legged partners has laid the foundation for involving service dogs in the rehabilitation of veterans and their families. The interaction between dogs and people undergoing long and sometimes extremely difficult physical and psychological recovery has shown positive results, allowing us to consider involving K9 specialists and their service dogs to rehabilitation process not only in the Kyiv region but across all regions of Ukraine. This new direction for the National Police of Ukraine is still developing, but we believe it will take its rightful place in the rehabilitation system for those who are defending our country”.
As Ukraine continues to face the challenges of war, canine-assisted therapy develops into an important element of the rehabilitation system for officers, veterans and their families helping them to rebuild physical health, resilience and emotional stability.
