1. Could you provide some background on how Paws for Purple Hearts got started? What was the driving force behind its establishment?
In 1975, Paws for Purple Hearts’ founder, Dr. Bonita Bergin, coined the concept and term “Service Dog.” Dr. Bergin realized that in addition to serving individuals with visual impairments, dogs could be trained to assist with mobility and psychiatric conditions as well.
In 1991, Dr. Bergin went on to spearhead the founding of The Bergin College of Canine Studies; the only school dedicated to educating dog trainers. Bergin College held a program at El Camino Continuation High School in which students assisted in the training of dogs to serve people with disabilities. This program was expanded to include the local juvenile detention center in order to give at risk teens purpose and greater self-esteem.
Dr. Bergin says one of her staff came back from the juvenile detention center program and said when he was watching a newscast about the struggles of Veterans in reintegrating into society, he realized this sort of Canine-Assisted recreational therapy program was a perfect fit for our Warriors. In 2006 this program became the beginning of the Paws for Purple Hearts’ Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy®. In July 2008, Paws for Purple Hearts held the first Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy® session at the Palo Alto VA’s Men’s Trauma Recovery Program in Menlo Park, California, with one hundred and thirty participants. Patients immediately responded to learning how to train dogs as a form of therapy for themselves and reported feeling a greater sense of purpose knowing that they have a new mission of helping a comrade-in-arms by helping to train a Service Dog.
In 2013, Paws for Purple Hearts launched its first Training Boot Camp, where Service Dogs who participated in Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy® were matched with an impaired Warrior. During Boot Camp, now called Team Training, Warriors take a comprehensive, two-week training course on proper handling and commands of their new “Battle Buddy” Service Dog, who will help the Veteran reintegrate into society successfully.
In 2015, Paws for Purple Hearts expanded, opening new facilities in Ruther Glen, Virginia, and Fairbanks, Alaska. In 2016, Paws for Purple Hearts opened facilities in San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California. In 2019, the Fairbanks operation moved to Anchorage, AK, making our services accessible to more Warriors.
In 2021, Paws for Purple Hearts was nationally accredited by Assistance Dogs International. In 2022, our program was one of three invited to participate in the “Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers” (PAWS) for Veterans Therapy Act. Through this pilot program, eligible Veterans registered through the VA health care system are recommended by a professional mental health care official to participate in the therapy offered through programs such as ours. Paws for Purple Hearts agreed to participate in this five year volunteer program to help prove just how life changing these dogs are to our Veterans and why it is important to continue to promote the Service Dog Industry.
Also, in 2022, a site opened in Tacoma, Washington. Through this growth, Paws for Purple Hearts has deployed 159 dogs and directly improved over 11,000 lives.
2. What are the main programs or initiatives that Paws for Purple Hearts offers?
Social Therapy:
Social Therapy uses the unique skills of our Service Dog in Training to bring comfort and joy to Warriors in a hospital or group setting. Social Therapy uses our dogs’ innate empathy, calm demeanor, and approachability to assist in the recovery process of injured Warriors.
Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy®:
Our signature program is Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy®. This innovative therapeutic Service Dog training program teaches Veterans and Active-Duty Military Personnel with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury the skill of training Service Dogs for Veterans with combat-related injuries. This mission-focused program provides our Warriors a new sense of purpose in training a dog for their wounded comrades. All of our Service Dogs in Training will participate in therapy programs prior to placement, allowing them to impact 40 – 60 Warriors by the time they are matched with their forever partner
Assistance Dog Placement:
Paws for Purple Hearts pairs meticulously bred, lovingly raised, and thoroughly trained Assistance Dogs with their ideal Warrior recipients using a scientifically rigorous matching methodology developed by the Bergin College of Canine Studies. Paws for Purple Hearts trains and places two types of Assistance Dogs. Facility Dogs can be found with their handler in a Veterans Administration Hospital, Military Hospital, or similar institutions, visiting Veterans to bring joy throughout the facility. They can also assist clinicians in improving the military patients’ response to treatment. While Service Dogs are trained specifically for a Warrior needing mobility and/or psychiatric support.
Our Assistance Dogs go through blanket training, regardless of placement, to learn over 110 commands making them more than capable of serving the most demanding category of mobility-impaired Warrior, a quadriplegic-level patient. Our dogs are also trained to perform tasks that mitigate the symptoms of trauma-related conditions. A Paws for Purple Hearts Assistance Dog helps improve the emotional and psychological well-being of their Warrior, reducing the likelihood of the most tragic consequence of trauma, suicide.
3. Can you describe the impact the programs/initiatives have on Veterans?
During Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy®, Warriors work with the same dog weekly to promote bonding. This is a recurring theme as Veterans relearn how to build personal connections, beginning with their dog. Each session starts with grooming to facilitate this bonding process. Following this, our Program Instructors teach Veterans how to properly reinforce commands for a Service Dog in Training and simple dog training concepts. Following the whiteboard lecture and demo, Warriors practice what they have learned. Each session ends with a playgroup for our Warriors and dogs to decompress with one another and ensures that the training experience ends positively. By creating opportunities for positive, meaningful interactions between Warriors and our Service Dogs-In-Training, our participants report that they feel a sense of purpose in accomplishing a critical mission – training a life-long “Battle Buddy” for another comrade. Hence our motto, “Warriors Helping Warriors®.”
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury are unresolved by most conventional treatments, but clinicians find Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy® immensely helpful. For patients with Traumatic Brain Injury, working with the dogs can stimulate regrowth of memory from learning and repeating commands as well as positively impact motor skills through repeatedly treating the dogs for a job well done.
For our Warriors struggling with symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress, Canine-Assisted Warrior Therapy® decreases emotional numbness, feelings of isolation, depression and dependence on pain medication while increasing the ability to display affection, feelings of belonging, and helps to develop better sleep patterns.
Following the dog’s participation in therapeutic programming, they will be placed as an Assistance Dog. Our Service Dogs are matched with Veterans like David. David’s story starts in 2011 when on deployment to Afghanistan, David survived an attack by a suicide bomber. David and his team were responsible for refueling military vehicles, so they were no strangers to being under fire. On that day in May of 2011, the attack came when least expected. The suicide bomber appeared at David’s base’s gate. According to David, he was “far enough away not to get killed, but close enough to get knocked on my tail and get knocked out.” He suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury due to the explosion and was later diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Upon returning home, David went to a dark place. Like many of our Warriors, he began drinking and drifting away from his family members. His wife urged him to get help.
In February 2021, David got the call that Paws for Purple Hearts had a match for him. Two months later, David went through an intensive two-week training course where he bonded with his forever partner, a yellow lab named Scout. David and Scout clicked instantly. Scout’s intuition predicted David’s anxiety attacks while Scout’s drive to work assisted David with physically demanding tasks like picking up David’s cane.
Today, you wouldn’t recognize David as the man he was before Scout. He stands straighter and hardly uses his cane anymore. If you ask him about Scout, he smiles and says, “Scout has helped my confidence so much that I feel happier when I wake up.”
4. What are the biggest challenges Paws for Purple Hearts faces in carrying out its mission, and how do you address them?
One of the biggest challenges Paws for Purple Hearts faces is overcoming the negative perceptions of Service Dogs. With the ability to purchase a Service Dog Vest online, people think they are able to bring their pets into public places without training.
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a dog must meet two main criteria to be considered a service animal. First, the dog must be “individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities.” Secondly, the task(s) that the dog performs “must be directly related to the person’s disability.”
The ADA requires that businesses “allow service animals to accompany people with disabilities in all areas of the facility where the public is allowed to go” so handlers can have their dog’s assistance.
In these situations, it is expected that the service animal behaves in a non-disruptive manner. The ADA specifies that a business owner may ask a person to remove their dog if “the dog is out of control and the handler does not take effective action to control it.” If a pet dog in a Service Dog Vest is barking and out of control, it can make the business owner question whether the next dog that enters their establishment is a legitimate Service Dog.
If the dog meets the ADA’s criteria for a service animal and is well-mannered and non-disruptive, then the handler has the right to have their service dog alongside them. This is why we do plenty of training to ensure our four-legged partners can remain calm and comfortable in public.
A large part of our mission is to educate people about the role Service Dogs play in helping Warriors along the road to recovery. We strive to overcome this challenge by advocating for Service Dog rights and ensuring the public knows the laws when it comes to Service Dogs.
5. How do you involve volunteers and supporters in your organization’s work, and what roles do they play?
Our volunteers are integral to our organization! Our general volunteers help to make our facility function day to day. They assist with construction projects, walking dogs, and events. With seven Service Dogs in Training at our facility in Ruther Glen, cleaning is a large part of their tasks! We also have a dedicated group of Puppy Parents, who assist by taking dogs home with them over the weekends. Our Puppy Parents provide a safe loving environment to give the dogs a break from their hard work during the week.
It costs $35,000 to fully train one Assistance Dog over the course of two and a half years. This includes all of the food, vet care and training that they need. Our supporters enable us to provide these life changing dogs at no cost to the Veteran who needs them.
6. What are Paws for Purple Heart’s long-term goals and vision for the future?
Paws for Purple Hearts goal is to expand our programming to be within a two hour drive of each large population of Veterans. Our hope is that our therapeutic programs and Assistance Dog placements are easily accessible by those who need them most. In 2021, there was an average of 17 lives Veterans’ lives lost every day. Paws for Purple Hearts refuses to let these Warriors suffer alone. Our vision is a world where this rate drops to zero.
7. Can you describe the process of finding the perfect match for both the veteran and dog, and the feelings that come after finding that perfect match?
In order to be considered for a Paws for Purple Hearts Service Dog, Warriors must provide thorough written documentation of their Active Duty or Veteran status and medical/disability eligibility. A Purple Heart is not required to be considered for a Service Dog from Paws for Purple Hearts. The Client Manager reviews the completed application. If the applicant is eligible for an interview, we request a personality profile completed by six family members, friends, or acquaintances. The personality profile filled out by the Veteran’s network is the same survey we use for our dogs. We also provide a more in-depth form about the applicant’s lifestyle. This helps us determine the best dog match if the applicant is placed on the waitlist. After we receive all additional documents, we schedule an interview, which is conducted in person by our field teams. If the applicant cannot travel, the interview is conducted via videoconference with the Client Program Manager. After the interview, we follow up with providers and family members. If the applicant is determined to be a good fit, they are placed on the waitlist until we find the appropriate dog match.
Our graduating dogs are carefully matched, factoring in their compatibility with the tasks and needs of the client, the client’s personality profile, home environment, and lifestyle. Once potentially matched, we invite the applicant to a two-week Service Dog Team Training course at a PPH facility. During the first week of Client Training, the Veteran officially meets their Service Dog. Our Veterans describe the matching as a breath of fresh air and meeting their dog is the beginning of the rest of their lives. Following the completion of Team Training, our staff checks in regularly with the team. By the time the teams reach the three month mark their bond is unbreakable.