“We need dogs like these in Chile,” said Seattle Police Department videographer Cesar Hidalgo-Landeros. It was 2007, and Cesar and I were in the middle of editing a training video about courthouse dogs, professionally trained canines who provide crime victims with emotional support during the investigation and prosecution stages. We had just watched a film clip of a five-year-old girl telling courthouse dog Stilson how she had been sexually abused.

It’s a Tuesday morning. Inside Thompson Hall, in a colorfully decorated basement-level room, a small group of women, each with a Labrador Retriever puppy at her side, sit in a circle. Barbara, a matronly woman with short brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses stands and commands her 16-month-old yellow Lab, Danny, to sit and stay. She then walks out of the circle into an adjacent area set up like an apartment and closes the baby gate behind her. She lies down on the floor as though injured and calls out: “Help! Danny! Help!”