The top therapy dog in the U.S. is a rottweiler from South Jersey. Good boy, Axel.

It had been days since the young boy from Uvalde, Tex. had spoken to anyone. A witness to the carnage at Robb Elementary School where an armed man gunned down many of his friends and teachers, the boy had been driven deep within himself by the horror.

Then he met Axel, a big, black bear of a therapy dog who’d come all the way from Camden County, N.J., to help.

At a church gathering, the dog’s handler and owner, John Hunt, asked the boy to introduce Axel to the other children. Before long the silent boy and the other kids were talking — at first about their canine visitor, but then about what they’d been through.

The whole time, the boy was petting Axel.

“The dog accepts you for who you are,” Hunt said in an interview this week. “He’s there for you.”

Axel has been there for many, many people. And now he’s getting his due.

The 4 ½-year-old rottweiler from Blackwood has been selected as one of the winners of the American Kennel Club Humane Fund Awards for Canine Excellence.

Axel is this year’s top dog in the therapy dog category. Other winners, from Georgia, Washington, and California, were honored in the exemplary companion dog, uniformed service K-9, search and rescue dog, and service dog categories.

“The stories of the ACE Award winners capture the meaning and fulfillment that our canine companions bring to our lives,” said Doug Ljundgren, president of the AKC Humane Fund.

The winners, chosen from over 600 nominations, each get $1,000 for their favorite pet charity. A broadcast special about the winners will be shown on Dec. 24 at 2 p.m. on ABC.

Rottweilers may not have that warm and fuzzy golden retriever rep, but then there is Axel. A gentle 110-pound giant, he has lent his patient presence to countless hospitals, schools, and first responder and military organizations. In the last two years, he and Hunt have volunteered over 2,500 hours and interacted with over 50,000 people, according to the AKC Humane Fund.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Axel was called upon to sit with dying patients when their family members weren’t able or permitted to visit. The dog also has consoled many nurses and doctors coping with the many pandemic-related deaths.

He also accompanies Hunt, a New Jersey State Police veteran who retired in 2009 after 27 years of service, when he conducts Critical Incident Stress Management sessions, helping first responders process grief following a death, suicide, or traumatic event in the line of duty.

In addition to offering support to the Uvalde community, Axel was deployed to Bridgewater College in Virginia where two campus officers were shot and killed this year, and to Surfside, Fla., where a condominium complex collapse in 2021 killed almost 100 people.

Hunt is cofounder of Crisis Response Canines, a New Jersey-based nonprofit with 56 highly-trained member dogs and their handlers in several states. One of those dogs was Gunther, Hunt’s oldest therapy dog and Axel’s uncle. Gunther, who won the 2019 ACE for outstanding therapy dog, had also brought solace to humans at major sites of tragedy around the country — the victims of the shootings at an El Paso Walmart and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., to cite a couple. He died from cancer early this year.

Axel is carrying on the family tradition, as Hunt trains young Ivan, another rottweiler learning be a therapy dog. Of course, even working dogs need to unwind.

“Axel just loves to be a dog,” Hunt said. “He and Ivan will run around and just have a blast in the woods.”

Truth be told, Axel seems to be taking well to this accolade thing. Even to getting his picture taken.

“We have to tell the people to look at the camera, because they’re so mesmerized by Axel,” his owner said. “Axel just puts on this smile and looks at the camera.”

Definitely not the last time he will mesmerize those around him.