02-05-2025
First Responder Friday: Wyatt the Weightlifter
PICKENS, SC (WSPA) – Wyatt the Weightlifter, the Pickens County Sheriff's Office therapy dog, has become quite a celebrity.
'I make jokes all the time that even as a captain, Wyatt has more appointments on my calendar than I do for myself,' Captain Shannon Ellenburg, who handles the dog, said.
Wyatt is a two-year-old golden doodle. Ellenburg said the dog was donated to the sheriff's office by Double U Doodles. We're told this breed of dog doesn't shed and is hypoallergenic.
That makes Wyatt perfect to serve as a therapy dog.
'I can't take a lot of credit for how well behaved he is,' according to Ellenburg. 'Because I really ended up with a dog that already had a really great personality.'
Ellenburg said she gave Wyatt his nickname from her time working out.
'I would carry him out to the gym to desensitize him to loud noises. And for whatever reason, one day, while I was throwing weights around and desensitizing him, I thought, He's the weight lifter.' He lifts the emotional weights off of people.'
Wyatt's services have been needed over the past several months. He was a regular visitor to Pickens County Emergency Management during the recovery from Hurricane Helene last September and October.
More recently, Ellenburg brought the therapy dog to meet crews that faced the Table Rock Complex wildfire for two weeks.
'We were there all but one day for basically 14-to-16-hour days,' Ellenburg told 7NEWS. 'He would just run around the command post and let the firefighters and all the different personnel that were there shower love on him.'
Pickens County Sheriff Tommy Blankenship saw the same thing.
'They (firefighters) would come in, and even if their hands were full of their gear, they would drop it. They would sit down on the ground and pet Wyatt. You could just see the weight and the stress of what they were dealing with were lifted for that, for that moment.'
Wyatt is always greeted with open arms at the sheriff's office. In fact, the dog is a hit across Pickens County.
'He has treats everywhere, not just in this building, but in the courthouse, the county administration building, the tax office, just about everywhere we go,' according to Ellenburg.
That includes inside Sheriff Blankenship's office.
'He is that calming presence. And the idea is that it's a service, right?' asks Blankenship. 'The sheriff's office exists to share and to serve the citizens.'
'It's not just about us making arrests.'
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