Mutually saved: K9s serving servicemen

They’ve been given a second chance, and when they put on their vests, they know it’s time to work. They are handpicked and trained to be obedient, intuitive, protective and supportive because they are serving the servicemen who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries.

The vast majority of dogs selected for the K9s for Warriors organization are found in shelters or at rescues in the southeast, and they are paired with a veteran and partake in three weeks of training for a lifetime of service.

Sheri Duval, whose son, Brett Simon, served two tours in Iraq where he was a bomb dog handler, founded the K9s for Warriors organization. When Simon returned from his second tour with PTSD, Duval noticed that his relationship with his dog kept him from isolation. After two years of researching service dog programs, Duval began K9s for Warriors, an organization located in Florida that trains and provides dogs service for veterans across the United States and her son serves as the head trainer. But unlike many organizations that train service dogs, Duval’s organization uses primarily shelter and rescue dogs, which she acquires through shelters in the southeast, including the Spartanburg Humane Society.

K9s for Warriors’ process of finding dogs is not a task that is undertaken without the assistance of volunteers and foster families, like the women who work for the Service Animal Project, which is in conjunction with the Foothills Humane Society located in Tryon, N.C.

Ann Goodheart, Mary Ann Merrill, Sev Bennet and Linda Williams, with the Service Animal Project, volunteer their time to find shelter dogs who’s personalities lend themselves to becoming service dogs. Ideal service dogs are 7 months to 2 years in age, with a full grown height of at least 24 inches, at least 50 pounds in weight, in no way aggressive, able to maintain focus and are easily motivated by food with a desire to please. Typically labs and golden retrievers are the go-to breeds for service dogs, but Goodheart said they’ve found many mixed breeds that have been equally fitting if not better for the job. Breeds perceived as more aggressive aren’t accepted, such as pit bulls or rottweilers.

“Some of it is just the overall personality of the dog. We’ve been doing this long enough that we sort of get a gut feelings…,” Goodheart said.
“If the public perception is, ‘hmm I don’t know if I could trust that dog or not.’ Some of this is interpretive,” she said.

The dogs are trained to maintain space control, block and cover, which places the dog between the warrior and the public, alert when someone is approaching, react to anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks and perform behaviors to “ground” the veteran and help them calm down and regain composure, in addition to commands tailored to veterans individual needs.

“So many of these men and women are so shut down and so afraid when they come back from where they don’t know who the enemy is and they don’t know who’s coming around the corner that may want to do harm to them. They cannot by themselves go to a grocery store or a CVS, I mean these are all things we take for granted,” Goodheart said. “They are terrified of somebody coming up behind them. So this cover command, the dog circles them and sits right behind them facing backwards, and that way they know the dog will alert them if someone is coming up behind them.”

Each month up to four warriors are paired with dogs and they stay with their dogs at the facility in Florida for three weeks of training, during which they are with their dogs 24 hours a day. The training and dog are free to the warriors and the only cost to them is getting to and from the facility. To date, 127 dogs have been placed with warriors, including Bomber who was placed with Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who in charge of Foot Hood on Nov. 9, 2009, when the shooting occurred and he was shot seven times.

“We have a young woman who has one of our dogs from last year. She graduated last year,” Goodheart said. “When she came down to K9s, Jennifer was on 25 different medications and she was seeing a psychiatrist at the VA. Now — and I think it was within three months — she’s down to one medication. These dogs can make such a huge difference in these men and women’s lives.”

The dogs are fully certified service dogs, trainers check in monthly with warriors and their dogs and the dogs are retested yearly to keep their certification. But, unlike dogs seeing-eye dogs, these dogs require less training.

“These dogs that can be trained to help with the emotional stress and disabilities don’t need that much time to work their magic…,” Goodheart said. “Our first dog actually came into foothills the day we made a presentation to the staff about what we were going to try to do. And he went down with a couple that volunteered to drive for us…they had told us that anyone who brought a dog would have to be willing to stay for three days while the dog was assessed.”  

Goodheart said that within hours of the dog arriving, the trainer emailed thanking them and saying, “I don’t know what it took for you to bring us Winston, but he’s going to change a warrior’s life.”

By law service dogs cannot be turned away or prevented from entering facilities, and whenever service dogs are working people shouldn’t approach them and pet them.

“They’re really not pets to anybody else,” she said. “And having said that, the other thing that really makes this such a good thing for us to be doing, is the dogs know when that special lease comes off and their service dog vest comes off they get to be a dog and play. So they get the best, they’ve got a job they know when they’re working and they know when it’s play time.”

For more information about the Service Animal Project, visit foothillshumanesociety.org/service-animal-project or email Goodheart at serviceanimalproject@windstream.net. For more information about K9s for Warriors, visit k9sforwarriors.org.

airwin@greercitizen.com | 877-2076